Why I Blog…
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
– by George Orwell, from his essay, Why I Write, 1946
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How often do you go back and re-read what you have written?
@Bonnie: Most of it, not at all. But the ones that I feel are my definitive benchmark pieces, I do re-read from time to time.
Of course, the passage quoted above was from Orwell, but could apply to any of us who make a serious attempt to write something meaningful from time to time. Only after those have simmered for a while do we begin to understand that they needed more salt, or less salt, or needed to be thicker or thinner…
It depends…
Writing a fictional story can be lots of fun. Just plain fun! The author doesn’t have to worry about facts because he simply makes them up to suit the story.
Writing an historical chronicle is painful. The author must be sure that all the historical recounts are truthful and factual. The author is often tempted to adjust the “facts” to suit his agenda. This often comes back on the author in very negative ways.
I write because I love to write and have felt I had something I wanted to say. This is true in commenting in other people’s blogs also. Historical stories, as was mentioned above, take a lot more work but if it’s a period I am interested in, that’s fine as the research is also fun. I recently read an author, who is about to be published, saying that they would no longer be doing any political writing. I know some actors feel that way also. They are afraid they would lose customers or be shut out of projects if they expressed their opinions politically. For me the quote here says it all. Write with passion or I wouldn’t care if I got read or published.
I was aware it was an Orwellian quote..but I am interested in the writers who comment, and wanted your input. I started to ask: Is that quote reflective of your attitude entirely?
I recently researched and wrote a lengthy historical essay for an art catalog. I loved doing it, every bit of it. It was published with one page of white type on lime green background. I can’t bear to even try to re-read it in that format.