What Does the Horse Give You?

People often ask a writer why they wanted to become a writer. In the case of all writers one reason is because we have stories inside us that we feel we must share with the world. If we don't record the story we feel it smothering within us. However, is there not a more specific reason within all writers? Is there not the main driving force that creates the stories within us? In other words, the source for our spirits and imaginations that enables us to create our stories.

For the longest time I could not tell a person what divine reason forced me to write. I would always say horses were one of my main inspirations, their gracefulness, strength, endurance, loyalty and legend have captivated me since I was child. I knew though, that there was an even more defining reason I wrote, but I could not express it in words.

The answer came to me from the poet, Louise Gluck, in my last semester of college in the Spring of 2010 in Modern Poetry class. We had to present a poem to the class and inform the other students what we thought about it. I chose Gluck's poem randomly out of search for a poem involving horses off of Google. The first two lines of the poem told me the reason I was writing: "What does the horse give you/ That I cannot give you?"

Finally, I had some words to express the driving force I have for writing. What does the horse give humans whose lives they touch? There is not a single word or sentence that can be termed a correct answer. My mission is to write stories that gives some sort of answer to this question.