Well Said: Why Write?

George Orwell on the motives for and influences on writing:

 …I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in—at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own—but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never complete escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, or in some perverse mood: bit if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write.

Agree? Disagree?

He goes on to list four “great motives” for writing:

1)   Sheer egoism: “Desire to be clever…to be remembered after death…determined to live their own lives to the end.”

2)   Aesthetic enthusiasm: “Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.”

3)   Historical impulse: “Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

4)   Political purpose: “Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society they should strive after.

From Why I Write, re-published most recently in Penguin’s Great Ideas series.

21. January 2012 by Mindy
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