Good question

I don't know about your house, but 'Why?' is a really big word in ours. 'Why do I have to go to bed?', 'Why can't I have ice cream for breakfast?', or my recent favourite 'Why can't I have a bottle with a cork so I can catch the sunset and look at it all the time?' Sometimes (well quite a lot, really) I think 'Why can't you just do what you are asked to,' but why can't I bottle sunsets is the kind of 'Why?' I love.

I was standing in the newsagent yesterday browsing the top selling books as the kids chose their Saturday comics, and 'Why?' popped into my mind. Why are the bestseller lists full of ghostwritten 'biographies' of celebrities who openly admit to never having read a book let alone written one? Why are there so many heartbreaking, voyeuristic memoirs about childhood abuse among the top sellers? Even the titles make me flinch - along the lines of 'Daddy, please no ...' 'Mummy, don't hurt me ...' I just don't get it do you? Why would someone write these memoirs - catharsis? revenge? money? I can completely understand writing it out for your own peace of mind, but to then publish ... And as for the readers, who buys this stuff and why? Does it make people feel better about their own lives? Is it a sense of schadenfreude?

Ever since I started weeping at nappy adverts during pregnancy, it is like having children leaves a raw nerve exposed. No one tells you that do they? That having children heightens your reactions to anything involving any child, that at some level even when they are just asleep upstairs let alone on the other side of the world, your heart will be restless and you will feel as though part of you is physically somewhere else. I have always disliked the kind of journalism that hypocritically 'exposes' child abuse while revelling in every single sordid heartbreaking detail (the British press are extremely good at this), but I can't even look at this anymore. Perhaps it's an evolutionary thing - you become a parent, and somehow you feel responsible for all the children in the world. Inevitably when you start thinking about this whole area you are left with a great big sad 'Why?'

I saw the gorgeous, cheering image above on the Collage Mural Project and loved it. It reminded me of a George Bernard Shaw quote I had pinned up on my study wall when I was about to finish school: "You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?” Later on I narrowed it down to a simple 'Why not?' It's still one of my favourite responses. Next time your children suggest something off the wall, try thinking 'Why not?' instead of 'Why?' Bottling sunsets - why not?

TODAY'S PROMPT: This is a deceptively simple one: Why do you want to write? There are so many other things to do with your time. Is it therapy? Does it keep you on an even keel? Or do you just love writing great stories? What motivates you? While you are thinking about why you want to write, why not make a bottled sunset (wide necked bottle or jam jar, paint a diorama sunset with your children, tuck it inside and glue it against the back (like the backdrop to a ship in a bottle). Fill the bottom with sand, shells, little figures, fairies, farm animals - whatever they can fit inside), and hey presto you have done the miraculous - you have bottled the sunset. Everything is possible if you keep an open mind.