Most writers write simply out of some strong interior need, and that, I think, is the answer. A great writer, writing out of this need, will give substance to, and perhaps even explain, all the problems of the world without even knowing it, until a scholar comes along one hundred years after he’s dead and digs up some symbols. The purpose of a youn

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He writes, he says, for four basic reasons. First, sheer egoism. The desire to seem clever and to get talked about. Second, aesthetic enthusiasm. The pleasure he gets from playing with sentences and words. But Orwell is nothing if not honest. And he has to admit that there are higher motives as well. Third, then, is the “historic impulse,” the desi

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That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it; y... See more