For Whom the Bell Tolls....

Or for whom you write.... you know, whatever.

I admit, I've not read much of good ol' Ernest. A realization that hit me awhile back, and something I began rectifying by giving Amazon more of my money.

(As if they weren't already getting most of my money to begin with, let's be honest.)

Obscure Hemingway references aside, every writer has a different motivation for writing. Some for the money or recognition. Others just to make ends meet. Still others as a way to purge internal monologues and stress. But for most writers, there is a compulsive need to get the words on paper; something drives them. It can't always be explained to non-writers. Hell, it can't always be explained to ourselves!

But the riskiest-- and sometimes least rewarding-- reason to write is for the satisfaction of others. As a freelancer, this is something I relate to far too often. It's a tricky thing; balancing that pesky need to pay bills with stifling your creativity in order to meet the parameters of others. How much of that effort do you still retain for yourself? Are you sacrificing your voice by not strictly sticking to your own private works? Or does writing anything at all, in any form, serve as a catalyst for further creativity?

As someone who took far too long of a hiatus from writing because, well... life, I can attest that simply putting words on paper again is a wonderful feeling. Even if it is for others, I'm still doing the damn thing.

Hemingway took the title of 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' from a 17th-century metaphysical poet named John Donne's 'Meditation XVII', published in 1624.

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

While Donne was writing meditations and prayers on pain, health, and sickness, referencing the medieval practice of funeral tolling, the quote can be abstractly applied to writing in general. If you write solely to please others, you'll never be truly happy. But if you simply find happiness in writing, any form of your craft will feed your soul. You have a truth within you that needs to be released, a bell that only your authentic creativity can answer.

For whom does the writing bell toll?

It tolls for thee...