1. Because people ask, beg, cajole, or bribe me to write something
for their book, magazine, conference, journal, etc.
2. Because it strokes my ego to feel that people find what I have
to say useful or at least interesting
3. Because writing helps me to clarify and develop my own thinking
about issues that matter to me, and once I'm done I might as well
put it out somewhere for others to look at, hence
4. Because people have read things of mine and then given me
very useful feedback, initiated dialogues, made me rethink or
expand, reformulate ideas, invited me to come and talk to them
or have come to talk to me
5. Because I like to make trouble. If there is anything useful
in this life that I seem to be good at, it is providing somewhat
alternative perspectives on issues that sometimes help or goad
people to see things in new ways, open up new possibilities,
and escape from assumptions and common wisdom that may not be
a good wisdom for them, or me.
6. Because it disciplines me to get more work done on problems
of interest to me (though it also occasionally sidetracks, or
more often backtracks me to other topics)
7. Because writing on request on a new topic has in fact generated
for me many new ideas and perspectives that have later combined
in interesting ways with what I was already working towards
8. Because you can only know what you can say, and in many cases
can only know it (because of how knowing, and it, are defined
in the case) through written language (however restrictive our
current genres undoubtedly are), and there are things I want
to 'know' in this way, out of curiosity, out of hope they might
be useful to me or others to make the world better (or more
likely just to stop making it worse)
-- perhaps not all the reasons, but enough. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU