Ideas for stories can spark themselves off anything you see and whatever you hear.
It is fun “joining” composites of attributes together to make a whole new character (s).
The buzz I experience when it goes well.
The buzz I experience when I edit my work well and I see a vastly improved story.
The fact it is therapy (and if you are lucky you can earn money from it! Either way it does you good).
Reading about writing (and author interviews) is almost as much fun as writing in itself.
Reading your work as if you were a stranger to it and discovering you like the characters and the story grips you. Always very positive. You are your work’s first audience.
The fact you have achieved something tangible.
Taking me out of “real life” as there are times I physically feel the need for that.
When my stories and characters come to life and seem almost as real as “real” people, I receive a great deal of satisfaction as if knowing I’m writing “properly”, I’m “doing it right” as such characters need to “catch on”. If I can’t convince myself, I’ll have a hard job selling the book to anyone else.
Knowing this is something I am doing. Nobody can write my stories in exactly the same way so even if someone had the same ideas as me, the way they’d write the works out would be different. While not meaning to be an egocentric, it is nice to know there is something I do that’s unique to me.