Do writers write because they have, as many say, a deep-seated passion to write and they absolutely MUST or they will cease to exist (damn, that sounds like an addiction or sickness, doesn't it)?

Or do they write only when they have a cause so impelling that they just have to put pen to paper to spread the word anyway they can?

Or do they write for the fun of it and enjoy it?

Or do they write out of desparation and for money...Sort of like a last resort (I think J.K. Rowlings started this way)?

Well, I feel those that write do so for a myriad of reasons not even touched upon by the aforementioned compulsions... Some defying convention.

This unique and humorous take on the subject is given by author Stephanie Pearl McPhee for Publishers Weekly:
 

The first time I wrote this essay, trying to explain why I write, I wrote what I've heard other authors say. Essentially (but really well) I repeated the grand idea that writers write because they must—the fire for the literary art burns so brightly in us that without writing as a form of expression, we would scarcely have a reason to go on. Now, after I typed that, I realized that I'm either more shallow or more complex, because I think I have another reason.

The truth is that I write because two things have been true about me my whole life. First: I'm a little odd. A good example is that I knit all the time, even at parties and I can't seem to stop, but there is a list of many traits that define me as odd, including, but not ending, with my serious issue with the way that people seem to think you can determine a woman's intelligence by whether or she wears a bra. Controlled breasts don't make you smarter. I'm plenty smart and I don't know where my bra is.  Second, I believe that if I only had the opportunity to explain myself properly, then I would be really understood, and then everyone would magically feel the way that I do and behave the way that I do. (This means I think most people would knit, or write or be braless—or at the very least, be transformed into people awestruck by knitters or writers.)

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