What they do is why

Or is it?

Brain Pickings Weekly had this at the top of its pickings on 22/12/13.

The question of why writers write holds especial mesmerism, both as a piece of psychological voyeurism and as a beacon of self-conscious hope that if we got a glimpse of the innermost drivers of greats, maybe, just maybe, we might be able to replicate the workings of genius in our own work. So why do great writers write? George Orwell itemized four universal motives. Joan Didion saw it as access to her own mind. For David Foster Wallace, it was about fun. Joy Williams found in it a gateway from the darkness to the light. For Charles Bukowski, it sprang from the soul like a rocket. Italo Calvino found in writing the comfort of belonging to a collective enterprise.

The newsletter was featuring Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do by Meredith Maran (Editor). I confess I should read what the writers said, but if the summary will suffice, I think all can be boiled down to this: If you write and place your writing before a reader, you are de facto revealing the warp (structure) and weft (qualities) of your own self-thought. That is, you are making a description, a whole fabric, of the structure and qualities of phenomena in whole and in part. Simple as that, and it is admittedly not so simple upon close scrutiny.

The key here is not just the writing but also the placing same before a reader or readers to experience as they will, as you, the writer, will.

Having said this, we can return to pieces of evidence, not all of the same order or demonstrating the same matters. Although you might argue with the implied thesis, what they do is why, though they say it's not. . . .