I tried to come up with something — a lie, even — that would sound like a great interview answer, but I didn’t want to lie to you. It’s a question that a working writer should have a ready answer for, something pithy and witty and quotable. Something that would line up nicely next to Gene Fowler’s great one about the nature of writing: “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Stephen King said, in On Writing, that a good interview answer can be one that makes the question go away, and he’s right, but I didn’t want this question to simply go away. I wanted to know why it was here, standing on my doorstep, leering at me through my screen door. I wanted to know what it wanted to know.

I wondered if the question was actually being honest with me, or if it was one question dressed up as another question, a wolf dressed up like a different wolf with a better reputation. This question asks What, not Why, but I felt like it had a Why sitting there, baked inside the cake it brought. The Why, like an ulterior razor blade, floating inside a fluffy cake where I might bite down on it unless — unless! — I cut the cake in just the right place and felt the edge of the blade with my cake tool. If I answered just right, the blade wouldn’t cut.

It’s a question that I should have a ready answer for, so I don’t fumble and mumble and leave it hanging the way you might an inquisitive lover. “No,” you must say, no pause, “you look great.” But you must not add, “You always look great,” because that says that you are not really answering the question — just making it go away.

For all the worry I put into the answer, though, I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at it. I’d look at it sideways, or squinting one eye so it flattened out.

What was I supposed to say? That I didn’t know the truth? That the truth was different, from day to day. That some days I did not, simply did not, and I didn’t want anyone to know? That I thought I was good, but that sometimes good doesn’t come with love, with real love? That I only liked the feeling afterward, the rush and nervousness of the spotlight and the attention? That I just wanted to be liked so I was doing what I thought I was best at — what I’d been told would make people like me?

I wanted to give you an answer that was vulgar but serious, that made you laugh a fleck of your oatmeal onto your computer monitor, that would make you come back, make you comment, make you peel back the layer and the layer under that, make you wonder how much of the stuff under there I put in on purpose and how just fell in while I was stirring the paint.

Was I supposed to tell the truth, straight up, or could I mix a sort of truthy cocktail, an honest highball that, yeah, you know, had the truth in it but went down smooth and worked a lot faster?

The truth was that it was like play, and that sometimes it still is, but lots of the time it feels like the matinee that’s in my contract — the show that must go on.

The truth is, now, that I don’t know but I may know tomorrow. The truth is that I didn’t want to lie to you.

What was the question?

“What do you love most about writing?” — Chuck Wendig