George Orwell famously wrote, “Why I write” – a defence of truth against propaganda, and a call to arms against the ills he saw in the world. In a time when he saw lies winning, he kept going. He saw clear writing as a defence against the bullshit of his day and much of what he says is valid now.
I don’t pretend this is that essay. We need many Orwells today, and those who write from wider perspective than he did. But also, his fiction outlived his journalism and political essays, at least in terms of sales.
I’ve done some minor Orwelling in my time and I should be doing more. I do believe that my fiction talks about how the world is and how it could be.
So why write then?
I recently summed this up as:
Like many writers it is a mixture of four things. Managing an urge; satisfaction with a job well done and a desire to improve; reaching other people and perhaps achieving change; and trying to get some financial reward. The latter is a pure and holy motive; if you spend a lot of time on it, and need to feed your family.
You can see that one can write purely for your own satisfaction, purely for yourself and your readers, or for yourself and other people and to make your way in the world.
I have always written. My grammar school did everything possible to stop people writing creatively or applying the truths in literature to modern life. That urge to write still fought through, and it has seen me try poetry for a few years, run a postal roleplaying game, and run various newsletters, promoting and commentating. My thirty years in communications were in some sense about spreading truth.
I have gone through spates of writing short stories. A writing bout in the early nineties brought me to some crucial personal revelations – all those characters tortured by private secrets who’d be happier if they were honest. What could that have been about?
Then on holiday in 2012 I fired up a new laptop and started a novel. That’s over ten years ago, and I have two traditionally published novels out and another with my agent. And perhaps a hundred short stories, from the brilliant to the disastrous, largely unpublished.
So why do I write?
I write because it is an urge, because I like the results of my writing (sometimes), because I want to do it better, and because other people I trust, like and enjoy my stuff. I want to share my stuff and hear back from people about it. It is partly an oblique way to ‘tell my truth’.
There are not vast numbers of people who write like me – I know few people who write in my space, and a couple of those who do are very successful, which suggests there should be wider interest.
So, I will probably carry on writing fiction. But in what frame of mind?
Recently, someone at my writer’s group expressed her desire to stick to the day job and ‘write as a hobby’. Right now, what she wants is to get confident enough to share her work and improve. That’s a wonderful and healthy ambition, because with determination, it’s achievable! My parents took up music in their late forties, and that hobby gave them enormous fun, a good social life, and a retirement purpose.
They were financially secure.
For many years I loved what I did for work, and it paid the bills. The work I used to do is now beyond me. Now I want to write, it feels like my purpose, but the bills bit is rather urgent.
Read my blog on author incomes.
So there is.
1 – Writing what I want
2 – Writing stuff to support my writing career
3 -Other stuff
which needs to add up to some sort of plan for the next ten years or so.
2023 will be interesting.
(Photo Amador Loureiro Unsplash)
