You Don't Have to Know Why

And sometimes it's better not to

My family on the dock in Emäsalo, Finland.

As a voracious consumer of anything about the craft of writing, and a bit of a contrarian by nature, anything that begins to smell of received wisdom gets me sniffing around to pick apart its weaknesses. This week I have finally begun to question the following:

“You must know your why.”

(The ungovernable teenager in me wants to smirk and say, “Why?”)

Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody has, as its second beat “Theme Stated,” where “you are giving the reader a subconscious hint as to what the story is really going to be about.” The well-known book coach and coach of coaches, Jennie Nash, has as step one and two of her method “Blueprint for a Book,” “Why write this book?” and “What’s your point?” She recommends, before even starting to write the book, that one should “Dig deep and write one page on why you must write this book. What does it mean to you? Why does it matter? Why do you care?” And these are just the best-known examples of a …