Why write?

For all of you who write blogs, which seems like everyone, and for all of you who read blogs, which seems like no one, may I be so bold as to recommend an interesting little treatise by George Orwell called “Why I Write.”

After a brief history of his own experiments with writing and assorted plagiarisms in various forms, poetic and prose, including what he calls “the cheapest journalism,” Orwell got down to the nut cutting, the core of the matter, if you will, that covers the rationale for most, if not all, scribblers.

First, sheer egoism.

“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.,” Orwell explains. “It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. … Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.”

I think that was both a salute and a sully to journalists.

Second, is aesthetic enthusiasm.

“Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. …” Orwell writes. “Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.”

Third, historical impulse.

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

Finally and perhaps most importantly, political purpose.

“Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

He wrote this in 1946, after “Animal Farm,” but two years before 1984. He said “Animal Farm” was his first conscious effort “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.”

Orwell wrote against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.

Ayn Rand wrote for free market capitalism.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote for libertarianism.

Others espouse various “isms” and journalism attempts to eschew them, not always successfully.

So, what moves you or me to write?

As the master said, “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.”

Even to themselves.