Why I Write
Why I Write
George Orwell, Steven Pressfield, and Julia Cameron.
In the last year of his life, the writer George Orwell kept a manuscript notebook. The year was 1949, and Orwell had recently completed Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was set to be published later the same year. The novel was written and edited while Orwell was ill; in fact, most of the final manuscript was typed from a hospital bed. Orwell was bed-ridden for the greater part of two years leading up to his death in January of 1950, and by 1949, felt too unwell to even continue his usual work of writing book reviews and articles. Nevertheless, he wrote as much as he could. Any strength he gathered was channeled into his work. He even stayed informed on politics (which motivated the majority of his writing) well into 1949, and wrote letters to his friends detailing his political opinions. His manuscript notebook contains plans for articles which were never written, and for a never-completed short story, which was to be titled “A Smoking Room Story.” It also contained the following quote, in which he describes his feelings towards his work. Its contents may surprise you.
“It is now (1949) 16 years since my first book was published, & abt 21 years since I started publishing articles in the magazines. Throughout that time there has literally been not one day in which I did not feel that I was idling, that I was behind with the current job, & that my total output was miserably small. Even at the periods when I was working 10 hours a day on a book, or turning out 4 or 5 articles a week, I have never been able to get away from this neurotic feeling, that I was wasting time. I can never get any sense of achievement out of the work that is actually in progress, because it always goes slower than I intend, & in any case I feel that a book or even an article does not exist until it is finished. But as soon as a book is finished, I begin, actually from the next day, worrying because the next one is not begun, & am haunted with the fear that there never will be a next one—that my impulse is exhausted for good & all. If I look back & count up the actual amount that I have written, then I see that my output has been respectable: but this does not reassure me, because it simply gives me the feeling that I once had an industriousness & a fertility which I have now lost.”
Orwell certainly fit the bill of the ‘tortured artist.’ Born Eric Arthur Blair, he adopted his pseudonym anticipating the publication of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, because he didn’t think the book was any good, and didn’t want it associated with his name. He was a harsh, unfair critic of his own books. He demanded an often stuffy amount of seriousness from his own writing, and was a poor judge of the quality of his own work. Some of the books that he was most proud of were ones that I found boring and difficult to get through1, and ones that he was unhappy with were some of his most enjoyable.2 The books he praised were his safest books: the factually-dense, ‘important’ books from which he could distance himself emotionally. Any risk or vulnerability is notably absent from them. Orwell’s case serves a decent reminder that a writer’s intent—and his opinion—hardly matters. Once a book is put out there in the world, it is in the hands of its reader. The greatest illustration of this that I can think of is that Orwell was unhappy with the final manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four. He described it as “an awful book really”3, “a good idea ruined.”4
Writing, for Orwell, seemed to be a burden and a compulsion. Yet his work gave his life meaning. He even stated in one of his letters that he’d be okay with living another five years in his bedridden state if only he could keep working. Writing (and I’d imagine all artistic endeavor) is a calling. It is undertaken out of a sense of duty. Orwell remarked in his 1946 essay “Why I Write”:5
“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 or understand.”
Orwell paints a bleak picture of writing—not one that one might expect from a prolific and accomplished writer. However, reading these quotes, I can’t help but be struck by the fact that they’re kind of true. My writing is often motivated more by guilt than by any desire to sit down and actually write. I never feel like I’m working quickly enough, efficiently enough. I never feel like I’m working on the right things, and I worry that the things that I do choose to work on are going nowhere. Every idea abandoned feels like murder. Sitting down to write is a struggle, every single day. While I doubt I’d put it as bleakly as Orwell did in his manuscript notebook (or in “Why I Write”), I have to admit that I’ve felt every bit of pain that he described.
A friend asked me recently if I enjoy writing. It was a question that I’d never considered before. I definitely enjoyed being a writer, but when considering the act of writing itself, I realized that the answer had to be no, or at least, not usually. Sometimes writing puts me in a trance, in which hours go by without me realizing it. Creation is more rewarding after it’s finished. But the dread of actually sitting down to write never diminishes, and I can’t say that the experience of writing is actually fun. The question stuck with me. It upset me a little bit. I always wanted to be a writer. It’s a part of my identity, probably the greatest part of my identity. How could this be so if I don’t even like writing? Unable to shake the feeling, I asked John the same question, and he gave me a very similar answer. Sometimes writing was enjoyable, but for the most part, it was excruciating. The greatest pleasure that could be derived from it was the sigh of relief that he breathed when it was all over. He did it because he had to. Not writing was too painful—he felt better when actively doing his work.
There are two books to which I credit my ability to write anything at all. The first is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The second is Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. The Artist’s Way helped me take the first steps, put pen to paper for the first time without fear and without judgment. It was a beginner’s antidote to the fear associated with creation. It gently restored my confidence—or faith—in what I was capable of. The War of Art was a kick in the ass. It picked up where The Artist’s Way left off. My fear was gone, but I still wasn’t writing. I needed to suck it up, get out of my head, and actually sit down and write. My enemy now was laziness.
In their own way, both of these books addressed the same things. They acknowledged that the perceived inability to write is a universal experience—is in fact the default experience that any successful writer has to battle against. Cameron called it a state of being “blocked,” and called the little critic inside every artist’s head their “censor.” Pressfield named the entire phenomenon “resistance,” and likened it to “a force of nature,” which “operates with the indifference of rain and transits the heavens by the same laws as the stars.” Both writers acknowledge that we can never be free from this opposing force—it’s an entity that exists apart from us—and the best we can do is strengthen ourselves in order to better combat against it.
Both writers contend that the act of creation is a spiritual practice. The headspace that we get into when we are writing is not one of hyper-vigilance, but of surrender. Writers at their best are not themselves any longer, but are simply acting as a channel for a higher power that works through them. Just like our bodies are tools by which our consciousness (whether we want to call this consciousness a ‘soul’ or a ‘personality’ or anything else) can be made manifest, our very consciousness is a tool by which art can be channeled to the world. The two writers describe this power differently. Cameron calls it the ‘Great Creator,’ and assures her readers that it doesn’t really matter how they label it as long as they open their minds to its existence. She asserts that this creative ‘god’ is responsible for all of the beauty in the universe, and that it is limitless in what it will provide for us should we accept its help. Pressfield calls it the ‘Muse.’ He claims that everyone has one, and they are all connected to the same universal force that encompasses everything around us.
There are certain characteristics which these deities share. For one, their power is strengthened simply by our faith in them. Pressfield’s approach to this is rooted in discipline—if we sit down every day and show the ‘Muse’ that we mean business, she will begin to work with us. Cameron’s method requires nurturing this muse, or this ‘Great Creator.’ We have to strengthen our relationship with her, or him, or it. While her approach surrounds relationship-building while Pressfield’s requires simple action, their methods are quite similar. Cameron’s two tools—‘morning pages,’ the practice of journaling each morning, and ‘artist dates,’ the allotment of time each week to do something by themselves—essentially embody the same principle as Pressfield’s advice to ‘show up’ on the page, and allow the rest to happen naturally. They both promise that when you do your work, the world will shift to accomodate you.
Both writers also acknowledge that a writer’s greatest enemy is fear. Their methods are, in essence, tools to guard against the terror associated with creation. Writing is an act of faith. It is impossible to determine with certainty (at least in this life) if this ‘Muse,’ this ‘Great Creator,’ is a real entity or merely a figment of a writer’s imagination. Nevertheless, it is necessary to believe in it. Without this faith, writing is soul-sucking. Julia Cameron put it best when she said that the process can feel like draining your own blood. It’s an exhausting, unfulfilling loop of procrastination and regret, and artists who are stuck in it are invariably unhappy.
Maybe the only purpose for this faith is to get us, as Pressfield puts it, “past the fear and onto the page.” It’s all the same thing, really. A few years ago, John went to a screening of Billy Corgan’s silent film Pillbox—an accompaniment to his album Ogilala. The event ended in a Q&A. An audience member asked him if he believed in God, and his response was “we are all gods.” Whether the ‘great creator’ exists within us or outside of us, whether something created the universe or whether the universe simply breathes outwards into all of us hardly matters. What matters is that the method works. Billy Corgan is an extremely humble creator. He too credits God with his success, and admits freely that he’s merely a channel for something far greater than himself. I’d bet that many successful artists share this sentiment. Perhaps if George Orwell got in touch with his fact, he would’ve been a happier man. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Either way, I subscribe to Julia Cameron’s philosophy—creation is hard work, but it doesn’t have to be painful. It’s a symbiotic relationship with the forces that made us, and by taking part in it, we get in touch with where we come from and where we’re ultimately going back to. By creating, we’re fulfilling our purpose. It’s our reason for being. And that’s why I write—not because I enjoy it, but because it hurts more not to.
The cover art for this piece, which I love, was created by The Griffin’s Inkpot, and can be found here.
e.g. Homage to Catalonia and Coming Up For Air.
Examples of books that Orwell disliked that I loved were Down and Out in Paris and London, the little-known A Clergyman’s Daughter, and, surprisingly, Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
In a letter written in February 1949 to his friend Celia Kirwan.
In a letter to friend & fellow writer Anthony Powell.