If George Orwell can do it, why can't I? I realise that my blog is not going to match up to Orwell's "Why I Write" essay, but I thought that ripping it off would provide much more entertainment than various other blogs I have been working on.

On that note, I would like to point out that although I have not posted any blogs recently, I have not run out of ideas; not by a long shot. In fact, I have written a number of blogs during this time; some in note form, others half finished but not up to standard, and one particular blog – an extensive list-cum-essay about what factors make an album great – which reached 2000 words before I realised that it was piss and no-one would read it.

But won't you find it far more interesting to find out why I write than for me to ramble on about why Joni Mitchell's Mingus is one of my favourite albums? Surely you'd prefer me to tell the usual dirty jokes than to rant on about my self-involved, unforgiving opinions? Journalism has turned me into a cynical, twisted, news-value orientated writer, unable to publish my writing freely; instead, justifying every word in order to boost my profits. I guess I just want to recapture my pure, childhood love for the letter: this is Y I Rite.

The short answer to why I write is that I read. When I was much younger, my mission in life – which I completed – was to read everything written by Roald Dahl (which he wrote aimed at children; I still haven't read any of his serious novels). The first book I ever read with complete autonomy was George's Marvellous Medicine on one of those long, pointless car journeys to the south coast of England. From then on, I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on; a habit that persists to this day. I read all the Goosebumps books, although I became tired of the very repetitive descriptions given in literally every edition; my heart sank every time a "sleeveless t-shirt" was mentioned. That's another persistent habit, actually: disdain for sleeveless t-shirts. That and repetitive description. That's not what good writing is all about! Imagery? Sure. The same image over and over and over? Jist naw.

I know for a fact that some of you have noticed another huge part of my writing depends on the use of big, obscure words. One of my regular readers mentioned that the single reason I spoke out during a lecture last week was not so that I could contribute to a debate, rather to make use of the word "tacit" – a personal favourite. This habit comes directly from my childhood habit of being a complete smartass. Maybe that persists today as well. I used to spend hours locked in my room reading my dad's huge, 1983 edition Collins English Dictionary – which I still keep close to hand (it's currently on my floor open at PSY-). This meant that I had a pretty extensive vocabulary and could whip my gran at scrabble and all the other word games I thought up to show off how great I was (and bore the shit out of her). Although, this did come with a down-side, like the time I was playing the smartass game with my gran and used the word "zygote" – forgetting that it related to sex and I was still a preteen. When she looked the word up in her dictionary (which I always thought was totally inadequate compared to mine), I broke out in prickly heat, turned red, and denied all knowledge of the word. Great defence, considering I brought it up.

Okay, so maybe these points don't too clearly illustrate why I write; instead they frame the origins of my writing style. I really wanted to avoid admitting this, but the real reason I write – the reason I've always enjoyed writing – is for the attention. Yes, even as the quietest kid in my school, all I really wanted was all eyes on me – and I never even realised how much I craved it until someone realised I could write. For me, this person was one of my primary school teachers. Maybe in this respect I should be more thankful of the education system. Our class was set the weekly task of writing a diary entry (again – this sounds like a persistent habit. Maybe I should give more credence to the "nurture" argument), and several times, the teacher read my entries out to the whole class, ignoring everyone else. I don't remember what exactly I wrote about, but I remember I never really put much effort into it; much like I don't need to give much thought to the blogs I write now. Writing comes naturally to me (which is perhaps why I've never given the "nurture" argument much credibility in the past), but as my entries were getting read out more and more often, I would put more effort in - I would aim to impress.

I never knew, at this point, that I was a writer. However, I can pinpoint the exact moment that I did: reading Orwell's Why I Write. When I realised that Orwell – one of my all-time favourite writers and my inspiration for trying to become a journalist – was of a similar nature to me, I knew there and then that I had what it took to be a writer. Orwell mentions a lot of his weird, writerly anomalies in Why I Write; almost every one of which I share with him. Never have I been so moved by a short essay. Reading what was essentially my own experience as a writer written by someone so famous and revered gave me a thrill that no word found in the Collins English Dictionary could fully describe.

Thus, the answer to Y I Rite is Why I Write. And that I'm an attention whore, but that was pretty self-evident. Hopefully this is understood by now, but perhaps it is not completely clear Y I Blog. As I mentioned before, I write for attention. Where better to blog than a website populated by potential readers, with a hits counter and a comments section? Oh, and subscribers – hint, hint. The original MySpace blogs – around 65 blogs ago, check them out – tell of how I struggled to find somewhere suitable for my attention-craving cause, and my archaic "Better Than Diaryland" headline is evidence of this. This is also another reason my blog site has been untended to recently – sure I've been busy, but MySpace is dying. I know I could publish these blogs elsewhere but to be honest, I like this place!

Of course, I never thought of starting a blog off my own back. In fact, I was inspired – right down to the 1,000-word blog word-count – by one Mimi Smartypants (of Diaryland). Her blog was one of the first blogs to be published in book form, and gathered her thousands of fans worldwide. Fame and fortune, ooh yeah! Not only was she the inspiration for my blog, but she was also a more overt inspiration for becoming a journalist. She describes, among pretty much everything else that is newsworthy that happens in her life, her job as a magazine sub-editor, and obviously, my wish to emulate her whole life depended on my selection of the BA Journalism course.

I continue to blog because although my circulation figures are dropping at a similar rate to live MySpace profiles, writing this crap provides a much more immediate release than any other form of expression. I'm a perfectionist, so anything under the vague titles of music and art becomes frustrating. Plus both take so much time, whereas a decent blog can be knocked up in an hour. I change interests very rapidly – I used to be (and, actually, still am to a lesser extent) criticised by friends for changing my favourite bands, style of clothes, choice of lifestyle, favoured races and religions etc. constantly. Blogs allow me to rant about anything on the same format, but stick to a general style and avoid complaints that I would garner from the pretend-artist community. Maybe the most important thing to me about blogging versus painting-or-whatever is the functionality side of it: neither music nor art allow the same number of viewers and therefore do not offer the same opportunity for scrutiny (and praise). It just makes art seem totally pointless and a completely needless expense. That was my main argument for giving up on my juvenile plans for going to art school - that and flunking art (and everything else) in the latter years of high school.

So overall, the reason that I write is that I thoroughly believe that I am a writer. And the reason that I blog is that, regardless of how many times I post my blogger's resignation on Bebo, I just can't let go of the thrills of posting. Besides, as I said, I have not run out of ideas – not for a long shot.