By Matthew Felix

“Why do you write?”

I had just walked into a busy café. The only seat available was the one across from the man now asking the question. A scruffy septuagenarian with colorful but suspect stories about giving up millions, living with Navajos, and unwittingly making an award-winning documentary, he had also been an English teacher.

His question was an obvious one. Curiously though, it was not one I recalled ever having been asked. I had to pose it to myself before I could give him an answer.

Why do I write?

I was reminded of the night before. Having worked hard all day to finish a project, it had finally come together. Once it had, I felt a rush as powerful as any that caffeine might induce. Visceral. Adrenaline surging through my body, inspiration lifting my spirit. It was exhilarating. So real, so unexpected, I had to question whether I’d forgotten about drinking coffee or eating dark chocolate earlier.

I hadn’t.

Writing was the rush.

As I thought more about it, I realized I’d been writing for as long as I could remember. The books I wrote in elementary school secured me spots at two Young Authors conferences. I still had my journal from a third-grade trip to the Southwest.

For many years, though, keeping journals was the only writing I did. It wasn’t until I unearthed several during a move that I discovered the wisdom they offered about how to live my truth. There it was in plain sight again and again, as I revisited pages written in my twenties and early thirties, a historian delving into my own past. Every few months I had longed to “take some time off and just write.” But I hadn’t. And I wasn’t getting any younger.

I couldn’t escape the feeling there was more to life than heading into a corporate office every day. But how to figure out what that might be?

I wanted to write because I suspected that, for me at least, writing was the way.

I also wanted to write out of a simple desire to express myself, pen and paper always having been a comfortable medium. I felt I might have something worthwhile to say. I hoped that some of my ideas, experiences, and perspectives might inspire, provoke, or even make a difference.

I wanted to write because I love language. Because learning others gave me a deeper appreciation for my own. Because in a time when so much of our communication is reduced to unreflective fragments, letter writing is a lost art, and entire languages are going extinct, I am no less intrigued by the written word.

I kept writing because I discovered how much I loved it. Not knowing where I’m going to end up when a story takes over and writes itself, rendering me little more than a conduit, a channel for some unseen muse. Being confronted by a daunting challenge and persevering until I overcome it. Those exquisite experiences when, like astronomers sending signals out into space in the long-shot hope their calls will be answered, I make contact with and am transported to other worlds.

I don’t want to die without having done something more meaningful with my life than taking a pleasant but predictable stroll down a safe and secure path.

As long as I’m writing, there is no danger of that.

Matthew Félix is an author, podcaster, and speaker. He also publishes and markets books for other authors. Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize called Matthew’s debut novel about a young Spaniard’s awakening to his intuition, A Voice Beyond Reason, “(a)

highly crafted gem.” Matthew’s With Open Arms won four Solas Awards and topped Amazon’s Africa and Morocco categories. Matthew was also awarded the $750 Solas Grand Prize for his short story “The Citroën & the Pomegranate.” Matthew’s latest book, Porcelain Travels, won Gold for Humor in the 2019 Readers’ Favorite Awards and was a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award finalist.