Why I Write
Nonfiction by Rina Toro
Locket by Randi Palmer
George Orwell once said, "good prose is like a windowpane." On the surface, it sounds like a call for clarity but really, writing has a way of controlling perception and shaping our reality. Clarity is about being understood, but it's also about directing how something is understood. How a story is told dictates what people take away from it and what lingers in their minds after they put the words down. I’ve always been fascinated by how easily people accept a well-told story as truth. A carefully constructed sentence can guide someone’s thoughts without realizing it. The right words, placed in the right order, can make someone feel, react, or believe exactly what I want them to.
Joan Didion, on the other hand, wrote, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.” Zetta Elliott approaches writing as an act of survival, stating that writing became her way of creating the world she wanted to live in. Their reasons are very different, but they all resonate with me. Writing isn’t just a habit, it’s how I claim space in a world that doesn’t always make room for me. I've experienced this exclusion subtly, like being talked over in conversations and feeling as though my thoughts were only acknowledged when they didn't conflict with someone else's emotions. No one can twist my words on a page before I finish saying them. I write because I crave control. I write because I want to give myself what I deserve through fictional characters. I deserve a narrative that doesn’t make me feel small. I deserve a version of life where I don’t have to apologize for existing the way that I do. And I write because I have opinions that are too sharp to be left unsaid. More than that, I write because I want my words to linger in someone’s mind, to shape their thoughts long after they’ve stopped reading. There is power in being the voice that stays with them, even if they don’t realize it.
Orwell saw writing as a political act, and in some ways, I do too. He once said, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism." I don't see myself as a political writer in a traditional sense, but writing, for me, is about power. The power to craft narratives, to decide whose voice is going to be heard, and to make sense of the world on my own terms. I remember being little, furious at my parents for constantly dismissing me, making me feel like my words carried no truth. In anger, I grabbed my journal and poured my emotions onto the page, each sentence sharp and harsh from my frustration. I recalled details no eleven-year-old should be perceptive enough to catch. When they found it and read it, something shifted. They saw me differently and understood something they hadn’t before. They still missed the point, but they learned one thing: never argue with someone who can remember everything and put it into words. That was my power, the ability to make people see what they want to ignore. It’s no accident that the ability to tell a story is the ability to shape how people see the world. That’s why history is debated, why certain voices are erased, and why people in power decide what gets published and what gets buried. It’s a silent persuasion. People don’t question a story the same way they question an argument. If I state an opinion outright, someone might resist it. But if I fabricate it into a story, if I make them feel it before they even realize what’s happening, they absorb it differently. When I write, I create entire worlds where I decide what happens. I control who speaks, who listens, and who thrives. I control what is right and what is wrong, even if it is controversial. This is the only space where I don’t have to ask for permission. And once I put it on the page, that version of events exists. It becomes something real that can’t be undone. There is something thrilling about knowing that in this space, I am God. Orwell talked about the "demon" that drives writers, the thing we can't resist or fully understand. For me, that demon is the hunger to shape the uncontrollable. Writing allows me to resist the forces in life that feel too big to challenge otherwise. The pressure to be agreeable, the pressure of making myself small so others feel more comfortable. The expectations placed on me because of where I come from, what I look like, and how I speak. Writing is the only place where I don't have to filter myself. Orwell was deeply aware of the way language shapes power, warning that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Words influence the way people see the world, and writing is a way to counter the narratives imposed upon us. I write because I refuse to be passive. I refuse to accept the version of events that others hand me without questioning whose perspective is missing. People assume that I don’t have strong opinions, just because I’m quiet, or if I do, that they must be easy to ignore. Writing is how I correct them and make them listen. I want to take the stories handed to me and rewrite them on my own terms. I would rather be the one creating the story than the one being shaped by someone else’s version of events.
Didion writes to explore herself, to figure out what she thinks and feels. That connects with my second reason, I write to give myself what I deserve through fiction. Writing is a way to correct the past, to put things right in a way life often does not allow. Didion writes, "we tell ourselves stories in order to live." I tell myself stories to make sense of what I lacked, what I missed out on, and what I never got to say.
There was a time when I swallowed words that should have been spoken. I think about those moments when I write. I take my silences and turn them into something loud, something permanent. I craft characters that make choices I wish I had made. I rewrite conversations with the perfect response I didn’t think of at the time. My characters don’t just live out stories, they justify me. They make the world see things the way I do. Some people call it escapism, but it feels more like restoration. My characters get to speak up when I couldn't. They get the justice, the love, the moments I longed for. The world does not always make room for fairness, but fiction does. It allows me to carve out a space where things make sense, where endings aren’t dictated by circumstance but by intent. Writing is my way of reclaiming my own story, rewriting what should have been, and what never was. Elliott expands on this idea, describing writing as a way of building a bridge between the world she has and the world she wants. Her words reinforced my belief that fiction is more than an escape, it's a way of creating justice, of offering myself the possibilities I have longed for. It’s about making others see the world as I do. If I tell the story well enough, if I make the reader feel what I want them to feel, then I’ve won. Then I’ve taken their mind, if only for a moment, and reshaped it into something closer to mine. Writing lets me construct a world where fairness exists, where endings can be rewritten, and where my experiences, both the painful and the joyful, can be shaped into something meaningful. It is not just about creating characters—it is about creating a reflection of the life I want to see.
Orwell said, "No book is genuinely free from political bias." I'd argue that no writing is free from personal bias, either. Every time I put words on a page, I make a statement about how I see the world. I write because I have things to say and because keeping them to myself doesn't feel like an option. I want to say that being quiet does not mean being weak and that rage can be silent and still change the world. The stories we tell shape the futures we get to live in. Silence is a kind of agreement, and I refuse to agree with the things that don’t sit right with me. Because once something is written, it’s harder to ignore. It lingers in a way that spoken words don’t. It can be re-read, dissected, and internalized. It can work its way into someone’s subconscious without them even noticing. Writing is my way of arguing with the world, making my perspective known, even when no one asks for it. Didion talked about a writer's ‘innate distrust’, or the need to examine, to question, to dig beneath the surface. That distrust is part of me, too. I can't just accept things at face value. I need to pull them apart, analyze them, and put them back together in a way that makes sense to me. Writing is how I process everything: ideas, emotions, and the world around me. It is my tool for bending reality to my will. I can make a villain sympathetic. I can turn a hero into a monster. I can make someone agree with me before they even realize they’ve been persuaded. Without writing, my thoughts feel tangled, like an unfinished sentence stuck in my head. If it's not written on a page, I can't solve the equations that make up my life. It's how I make chaos feel less chaotic. Elliott adds to this idea that for marginalized voices, writing is not just expression but also resistance, stating, the stories we tell become the spaces where we exist the most freely. This deeply resonated with me because writing is the place where I don’t justify myself, where I don’t have to shrink or adjust to fit into someone else’s version of reality. It is where my voice is the loudest, my thoughts most unfiltered. I write because it is the only way I know to take up space fully and unapologetically. It is the one place where I do not have to fight to be heard. Because when I write, I don’t just take up space; I take space away from others. I make them see things my way. I shape the conversation, and in that shaping, I take control.
Orwell, Didion, and Elliott all wrote for different reasons, but in their words, I see my own motivations reflected back at me. Like Orwell, I write for control. Like Didion, I write to understand myself. Like Elliott, I write to claim space for my own thoughts. Writing is my way of resisting, revising, and reshaping the world around me. It is how I assert myself, not just into a conversation, but into the minds of others. My reasons shift and evolve, but at the heart of it, writing is how I make sense of myself and the world. And maybe, if I do it well enough, it’s how I make others see the world the way I want them to. That's why I write.
Rina Toro is in the Creative and Professional Writing program at Humber Polytechnic.