Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.ĭoes this describe any writers you know? Read the whole essay for more on why Orwell wrote. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one.
Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. I take it that Orwell was a very intelligent man- yes, he did write the horror 1984 and fairytale Animal Farm, and given their success and, should I say. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose.
What's most interesting about the essay is his frank admission to the role of the writer's ego in the process.
It describes his motives, and the motives he suspects are universal, in writing books. I recently stumbled across an essay from 1946, by George Orwell.
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