About This Project
The I Write Because Project was inspired by a writing exercise from Priscilla Long‘s class at the 2012 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference.
In the class Priscilla shared with us an excerpt from Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk’s 2006 lecture. The excerpt made excellent use of repetition of the phrase “I write because” and Priscilla asked us to do the same, inspiring twelve creative writers seated around a conference table in a room called Chamisa I at the Sagebrush Inn in Taos, New Mexico to scribble frantically as the timer ticked off ten minutes.
As we went around the room and shared what we’d written I realized that although we were all different ages, from different parts of the country, and from different family experiences, we all were inspired to write for very similar reasons.