Why I Write
“Writing has never been a way to pass the time for me. It is a way of inhabiting the world.”
Certain pages are not born from current events. They arise from a need to put into words what deeply moves us. For a long time, people have asked me why I write.
The question seems simple. Yet over the years, I understand that it cannot be confined to a single answer.
Here is the most sincere response I can offer today.
01. A Necessity Rather Than a Choice
One never writes for a single reason. One writes because various, often subterranean forces eventually converge toward the same necessity.
I do not write to add another title to library shelves. Nor do I write to distract a few readers for a few hours.
I write because certain characters, certain wounds, certain hopes continue to live within me and demand a space to breathe.
Long before a novel finds its first word, it already exists in another way. Silhouettes appear, voices return, questioning gazes linger, a scene refuses to fade away. Nothing is ordered yet, nothing is written yet. But something insists. As if these characters had invited themselves into my imagination and were waiting for me to finally open the door.
To write is to accept this encounter.
02. Characters Before a Plot
I almost never start from a plot.
I start from a question. A question that haunts me long before finding the characters capable of embodying it.
What sets me in motion are human beings: their way of loving, of making mistakes, of resisting, of renouncing. Events interest me only through the upheavals they provoke. A separation, a disappearance, a secret, a war, or simple chance become novelistic only at the exact moment they shake a human conscience.
The novel is, for me, the place where one can observe the human being with a patience that daily life does not always grant us.
It allows us to explore what daily life often leaves in the shadows: contradictions, doubts, silences, impossible choices, loyalties that survive time, and renunciations that shape an existence.
03. The Questions Traversing My Novels
That is undoubtedly why memory occupies such an essential place in my books.
We are all heirs to our past. It builds us, protects us sometimes, and traps us too. Some seek to recover what they have lost; others try to escape memories that have grown too heavy. Between remembrance and oblivion lies an essential part of our identity.
Love also traverses my novels, not as a promise of eternal happiness, but as an experience that reveals each person to themselves. It is made of encounters, but also of distance, silence, loyalty, doubt, and time passing.
Books are easily categorized: psychological novel, thriller, historical fiction… I understand this need. Yet when I write, these boundaries fade.
Suspense interests me when it illuminates characters, not when it accumulates effects. History fascinates me when it meets individual destinies. Emotion touches me when it arises naturally from a human situation: what makes us who we are?
04. The Reader Completes the Book
I deeply believe that literature does not provide answers. It teaches us to look differently.
A novel is not intended to close a reflection, but to open it. It invites readers to continue the journey with their own memories, wounds, and questions. Two people never read the exact same book.
From that moment, the book ceases to belong solely to its author. It belongs to its reader.
05. A Way of Inhabiting the World
Writing is not imposing a vision of the world. It is offering a space where an encounter becomes possible: between a story and a sensibility, between imaginary experience and lived experience.
And because I remain convinced that literature possesses a unique strength: that of helping us better understand others while inviting us, discreetly, to better understand ourselves.
“It is a way of inhabiting the world.”
— Rida Lamrini
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