Writing is a hard thing. Lonely, strange, wonderful and awful. And everyone who writes will, at one point or another, in a whisper or a heavens-directed bellow, ask the question: WHY?

Every Monday, we’re going to be inviting a writer to tell us why they write. We might ask them to tell us a bit about how, too.

This week, the unutterably wonderful Nikesh Shukla gives his answer:

Nikesh Shukla

Nikesh is the author of Coconut Unlimited, The Time Machine and, most recently, the extremely excellent Meatspace. You can find him here, and on Twitter.