Writing Quote: writers write…to relive life (Donald Murray)

Donald Murray assures us that writing is a tool for personal reflection and insight. “The material for writing is in your head,” he says. “It will be recovered, relived, understood, and shared through writing.”¹

In his book Write to Learn, he continues:

One of the principal reasons that writers write is to relive life. (Donald Murray)²

I’ve heard variations on this. Anaïs Nin, for example, wrote:

We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.³

On this same point, Murray expands:

Writing is also rethinking. When we write a personal experience we re-experience it and have the opportunity to give it a shape and meaning that may not have been apparent the first time around.⁴

Patrice Gopo, too, mentions this “meaning-making on the page” in my 2018 interview with her. Through writing essays, she finds connections and makes sense of situations, scenes, and self.⁵

Expressive writing and writing as expression has transformed me, as well.

I write to serve, to inspire, to inform readers. But I also maintain a personal writing practice, to relive life—to taste life twice—and make meaning of it, memory by memory, line by line, word by word.

Click for more writing quotes

Footnotes

1. Murray, Donald M. (1984). Write to learn. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (p.19).
2. Ibid.
3. “Anaïs Nin – We Write to Taste Life Twice.” Byron’s Muse, 24 June 2018, byronsmuse.wordpress.com/2018/06/24/anais-nin-we-write-to-taste-life-twice/.
4. Murray, Donald M. (1984). Write to learn. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (p.19).
5. Kroeker, Ann. “Patrice Gopo on Meaning Making on the Page and Studying the Craft.” Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach, 6 Nov. 2018, annkroeker.com/2018/11/06/ep-173-interview-patrice-gopo-meaning-making-on-the-page-and-studying-the-craft/.