> Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

This essay was written in 1946. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell_bibliography#Nov... consecutive books he published were:

* Coming Up for Air (1939)

* Animal Farm (1945)

Given the "seven years", it appears considered "Coming Up for Air" his previous novel, and "Animal Farm" not a novel. I wonder why?

In any case, the novel that he next wrote “fairly soon”, and which he predicted would be a failure, was:

* Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

I think I haven't been exposed to such a good writing in years. (Which probably says as much about average modern writing as it does about my reading habits)

> 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. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention.

Story of my life is how to align that demon to force me into things I actually want to do.

Posted 9 times before but only a couple threads with comments, and not many of those:

George Orwell: Why I Write (1946) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7901401 - June 2014 (9 comments)

George Orwell: Why I write - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122646 - Oct 2011 (1 comment)

For those interested in Orwell, there's a great series of podcasts on his writing during and either side of WWII here:

https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/orwell%E2%80%99s-war%3A-th...

https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/orwell%E2%80%99s-war%3A-fa...

https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/orwell%E2%80%99s-war%3A-fr...

What's great about these is that they're not the usual uncritical lionising, but a clear-eyed look at the many, many things he got wrong, his lack of self-criticism when he did, while still giving him appropriate credit for the big things he got asbolutely right, like the impending cold war (a phrase he popularised).

> For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a matchbox, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf,’ etc., etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside.

This is fascinating and totally alien to my experience. I don't often think in words at all unless I am preparing to either write or speak them.

An important collection of essays but I struggled to get over his racist claim that the English, Irish, Welsh and Scots are essentially all the same. Probably a good thing since I'm now much more inclined to be questioning of other parts of his writing.

> Gangrel, No. 4, Summer 1946

I never heard of Gangrel magazine [1]. It had only 4 issues total, and this essay was in the last one. Editors J.B.Pick (age 24 at the time) and Charles Neil asked Orwell and other writers to explain why they write. Pick later became a writer himself.

All this to say that we might've not see this essay if not for those two young editors trying to get established writers' perspective on the craft.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangrel_(magazine)

The whole 'demon' thing in the essay reminded me how my mom likes to say: you should only write if you cannot not write.

> I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts

A power to face unpleasant facts is a super power. The world would be a much better place if everyone had it.

This resonates so strongly with me. Everything he wrote about how he wrote in his youth and the analysis of motivations to write is so spot on. It's also really interesting to know that he was actutely aware of the tendency to let the political propaganda weaken the storytelling, because that was something which surprised me when reading Nineteen Eighty-four. It was great, but there were moments when it felt like he dropped the pretense of telling a story and momentarily slipped into overt lecturing.

Related: Econtalk podcast episode on George Orwell with guest Christopher Hitchens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Dg9T14c4k