Why do writers write?

Allan Massie dismisses some obviously misguided answers to this question, before offering a few better ones. The best of them, for my money, is this:

[For] the simple pleasure to be had from making something, common to the practice of any art or craft. To bring into being what did not previously exist, and to present it in an agreeable shape, is deeply satisfying - even if the final result is always inevitably less than you looked to achieve.