[lin]

I'd say we've established that we can write without having any reason whatsoever.

[Rocket Sheep]

Well we've established that that's what we do...
but we're yet to establish that there's any benefit to anyone for it.

[Dawnstorm]

but we're yet to establish that there's any benefit to anyone for it.

Papermills. Pencilmakers. etc. etc. etc.

[Loftlore]

I do know that I write because it’s fun!
What’s your reason?

My first post on this sub. I picked this question, made this reply because this is an important question. Why write?
My three fantasy/SF works have taken up YEARS of my life. They have monopolized my imagination. My writing has cost me a lot of money (and the costs are still adding up). My writing sent me back to collage at the age of thirty! It wakes me up at night, makes me buy dictionaries, and even influences the kind of car I buy (long story)! It can be torture! Why write?
Answer: to change a mind, to make a difference however small.
When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin the book was considered outrageous, or silly or even lascivious by many. That work, however, helped to awaken the northern states to the evils of slavery. It moved people to right a great wrong.
There's my reason for writing. I wish to right a wrong, to make a difference.

[Loftlore]

It's taken us 3 pages but I think we have clearly established that there are no good reasons to write.

This reminds me a a wonderful line, a book's conclusion, that I read in 1980. A young man was searching for a reason to commit suicide. After much thought he concluded that there was no reason to live. He also colcluded that there was no reason to die. Mayhaps the why and why not of writing is the same.

[Rocket Sheep]

I like that.

The fact that it took us three pages of writing to come to the conclusion that there is no reason to write deserves a good comeback.

I'm also impressed that you can use lascivious in a sentence genuinely. :D

[Hereford Eye]

The fact that it took us three pages of writing to come to the conclusion...
The more we write, the more we learn which is another good reason for writing.

[Loftlore]

I write for the same reason a cow gives milk.
-George Bernard Shaw

I knew it! It's about the grass!

[Loftlore]

I write because it's a hideous obsessive compulsive disorder. Oh sometimes I dress it up as a desire to entertain or connect or be perfect in one tiny area of my life but really... there are better things I could be doing with my time if only I could break the habit.

I say Amen brother!
Oh... a side note. The collective you will notice that I don't use icons, smiles or keyboard cuties (winks, grins etc.). I figure that it took Man thousands of years to drag our first audible grunt from out ancestral mouths and longer still to write the grunt down. In deference to the hundred thousand years it took to write down "smile" for the first time, I will continue to do it the hard way. Smile!

[Hereford Eye]

Ah, but in effect, man started with icons, e.g., hieroglyphics, grass writing, et al.