“The deepest motive for writing”

Richard Lanham:

Motive has always been the question of questions for Freshman Composition. Perhaps more success might flow from assuming, paradoxically, that the deepest motive for writing is not communication at all but the pleasures of writing for its own sake. Writing to others is a writing for ourselves. Clarity in communication may be less the cause of our pleasure in prose than the result.

Style: An Anti-Textbook, 2nd. ed. (Philadelphia, Paul Dry Books, 2007).

Also from this book
“Slow Reading”
Writing and speech