Why I Write (1946)

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/

by RyanShook • 3 months ago

298 82 3 months ago

jimbokun• 3 months ago

This is critical to consider in this age of slop. It’s important first to consider the purpose of writing anything at all. Slop almost always fails this test.

keyle• 3 months ago

People that don't understand this is best to explain to with AI music.

AI music appears to be reasonable music, but it carries no human emotion, it has no intent to exist and stand up on its own.

That's key to explain when it comes to writing or anything. AI assisted anything, sure, maybe, but AI for creative purposes is bland and ultimately poisons the well.

No one really wants to go see an AI movie at the cinema, except maybe to say that I tried an AI movie as a novelty item, like scented movie screening.

gdulli• 3 months ago

People who only see art as its surface content without all that other subtext are exposing themselves.

userbinator• 3 months ago

On the other hand, it can't be denied that AI political music has given the population a bigger voice.

satvikpendem3• 3 months ago

And yet many people listen to AI music, some examples on HN even [0], one of the main reasons being it can create songs tuned to very specific niches that cannot normally be found much. I also have found very entertaining videos and content made with AI, such as Pokemon "nature documentaries" [1] and I imagine people in the future will want to see an AI movie if it appeals to them, because it's content that would otherwise be too time consuming or unprofitable to create without AI.

That is to say, it is unwise to dismiss what the mass populace will do simply because it doesn't meet one's internal threshold of quality; many don't give a shit about quality.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43869353

[1] https://youtube.com/@natgeopocket

Pay082• 3 months ago

Guess what, most music I listen to didn't have more thought put behind it than "this sounds good" either.

knighthack• 3 months ago

AI music appears to be reasonable music, but it carries no human emotion, it has no intent to exist and stand up on its own.

The 'lack' of human emotion does not make anything less musical, at least on the composition side.

But even on the playing side: well-crafted AI music these days have started sounding just as expressive as human-made music. It is not bland at all.

152334H2• 3 months ago

homely and relatable, but why promoted on HN?

How many here have read Burmese Days, had the bookworm's childhood, and are imbued with that sense of political worldliness?

defrost• 3 months ago

  Hacker News Guidelines

  What to Submit

  On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

~ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang2• 3 months ago

HN is for anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Historical and/or unexpected materials are welcome here! Having them on the site is a long tradition. (As is the "why is this on HN" comment, of course.)

It sounds like you know your Orwell - want to share something about that?

phlakaton• 3 months ago

Haven't read the book, but points two and three definitely struck some bells in the back clocktowers of my mind.

More generally, reading a bit of Orwell was inescapable in my schooling, but I sought out 1984 myself. I discovered I had kind of a thing for both utopias and dystopias.

And as I contemplate things I might write or compose, I do note that outrage towards this regime is very much in the mix of my motivations.

Pay082• 3 months ago

Wow that's a lot of snobbish superiority.

nomilk2• 3 months ago

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.

dang2• 3 months ago

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)

fabmilo• 3 months ago

Writing it thinking. We developed our brain together with our hands. It feels slow but is actually faster for the end goal.

kuboble• 3 months ago

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.

blharr• 3 months ago

It's something that's really been worrying me these days. With AI creating literally floods of information, it's getting noisier and noisier.

Cthulhu_3• 3 months ago

And with AI ingesting said floods of information, there's less incentive to read as well.

Case in point, I've let AI help me write some documentation; I'd probably end up writing just as much in the end so I don't think there was much waste, but in the back of my head there's two voices now.

The one says "nobody will actually read this. I wouldn't, but I think it should be written down just in case".

But the other says "an AI will ingest all of this and give everything equal consideration, unlike most humans"

So yes, it is getting noisier, but as long as there's enough oversight and aggressive editing / cutting, it's probably manageable and hopefully helpful for our AI overlords.

boznz2• 3 months ago

Yes, not a good time to be a new author, as I well know, but you also need to go back to the title of this post "why I write" - There is a lot more to wanting to write than fame and money (which you are very unlikely to see either of)

6LLvveMx2koXfwn• 3 months ago

"I haven't been exposed to such a good writing in years." yes, this Orwell chap might have something about him!

Loino2• 3 months ago

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)

I have been reading the Aubrey-Maturin book series by Patrick O'Brien (you may have heard of the film, Master and Commander, based on some of the books). It is a literary treasure trove that has impeccable historical accuracy. The same demonic drive rings through in these books as POB started his series of 20 books well before the information age.

IAmBroom• 3 months ago

As an aside, there's a Facebook group for Patrick O'Brien fans. Content consists mostly of questions about tiny details in one book, which are rather nicely examined in a cooperative, investigative spirit by other fans. It's refreshingly different from, well, pretty much all other online discussions.

randusername• 3 months ago

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

My favorite example of creators discussing the drive to create is from the video game Dwarf Fortress. It has mechanics for it [0].

Dwarves that are stuck with inspiration to create a masterwork will go mad and destroy themselves if they can't find the raw materials they need.

Dwarf Fortress is known for the absurd scale of its simulations: history, war, love, geologic formations, fluid dynamics, prognosis of specific injuries to specific body parts. It's an interesting detail that creative frustration earned a place in that web of "realism". It's a significant part of the game.

[0] https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Strange_mood

mghackerlady• 3 months ago

I really wish Dwarf Fortress was open source or at least source available. The game is freeware anyway, it isn't like he'd be losing money

analog8374• 3 months ago

sounds like software dev. Life consuming

lioeters• 3 months ago

Writing software 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..

Yeah that fits.

epr19• 3 months ago

ahahahaha, I code in the day and write by night. And no, I do not have a semblance of life.

svat3• 3 months ago

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)

caymanjim• 3 months ago

Animal Farm is considered a novella, which is shorter than a novel.

pasquinelli• 3 months ago

for perspective, a novel is around 100k words, and animal farm is under 30k.

dzink• 3 months ago

He wrote for aesthetics and he wrote for politics. In the end, he saw the aesthetic writing as meaningless.

renticulous• 3 months ago

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.

I think "what one wants to be" is a fashion and depends on the era. Today's children want to be youtuber or content creator. I grew up in consuming youtube and social media so I consider those mediums to be more captivating and allows for vivid storytelling captivating dominant senses.

Agentlien• 3 months ago

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.

wartywhoa23• 3 months ago

No amount of overt lecturing seems to have woken up enough people to recognize that the same hydra that Orwell described 80 years ago is rearing its ugly heads again.

nomilk2• 3 months ago

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

delis-thumbs-7e3• 3 months ago

It’s years since I’ve read Orwell, but I believe I have read almost all of his books (Coming up for Air nor Clegryman’s Daughter I have not read, or I don’t remember a single thing about them).

He’s Non-fiction books (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, and especially Homage to Catalonia) are great. If you are at all interested what it was like to live in Europe in this time of economic turmoil and political chaos, those are essential. I also think Catalonia very clearly spells out why Orwell hated Soviets (although he was socialist himself) and didn’t fall for Hitler and all the other themes behind Animal Farm and 1984. He had seen it all serving as an idealistic young man amongst the Spanish anarchists. As an essayist he is beyond reproach and very must enjoyed his short stories.

He was also a curmudgeon and conservative in the most ridiculous things (everything British is the best in the world according to him, he was a complete misogynist - he treated women horribly both in real life and in his writing - and vegetarianism for him was the stupidest nonsense ever, calling them “juice drinkers”). And I’m sorry to say this, but his novels are awful. Not 1984 of course, which is one of my favourite books, and Burmese Days is not half bad in itself, but it is god-awfully bleak with non really any real critique of colonialism or racism, it just kinda says “It’s a bit shit, isn’t it?” Aspidistra was just boring and stupid. You also do not hear Orwell’s voice and that direct unapologetic honesty you get from his essays (“A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant” are great). I get an idea he was trying to write like the great male writers of his era, not as himself, as a reporter of human life, what all good writers really are. But that’s just my opinion and it is ten years or more since I read them.

However, there’s plenty more to Orwell than just 1984 and Animal Farm. He was fascinatingly complex person, who could see through the fog clear-eyed when no-one else could, but still be completely blinded by his own misgivings and prejudices. But then again, aren’t we all.

emmelaich• 3 months ago

About the "worst" thing I've read about Orwell was that he was a relentless moralist and didn't know how to have fun. Sorta the opposite of P.G.Wodehouse.

Which ... I'm OK with. I've read most of his work too. Of course 1984 and Animal Farm are the best but Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London are good too.

(I also love Wodehouse)

delis-thumbs-7e3• 3 months ago

Worst thing you read about him is surely that he apparently tried to rape a girl in his youth:

“ But Venables's postscript changes all that. Venables is the Buddicoms' first cousin, and was left the copyright to Eric & Us, as well as 57 crates of family letters. From these she made the shocking discovery that, in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell.

Venables believes that the attempted "rape", which, in truth, sounds more like a botched seduction, may also explain the sad, desperate things that happened next. She reveals for the first time that, in 1927, Jacintha gave birth to a daughter as a result of an affair gone wrong, and was obliged to let her childless aunt adopt the baby. When Eric returned that year on leave from Burma, he interpreted Jacintha's absence from the Buddicom family home as evidence that she was still angry with him (in fact, she was spending six painful months in seclusion). Any chance of picking up where they had left off, perhaps even marrying, had now gone for good. From that point, both of them seemed to give up any hope of forming a nurturing relationship. Eric turned to Burmese prostitutes and Jacintha to a 30-year affair with a Labour peer.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.b...

svat3• 3 months ago

Incidentally, in 1946 when the British public had been turned against Wodehouse because of the (entirely innocuous) radio broadcasts he had made as a German prisoner (I imagine Lord Haw-Haw was on their mind, which influenced their opinion), Orwell wrote “In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse”: https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/plum/english/e_plum

152334H2• 3 months ago

Thank you

Cthulhu_3• 3 months ago

But then again, aren’t we all.

Yes, but being aware of it is powerful in itself.

I think that in this case, read Orwell, but don't only read Orwell or base your entire viewpoint on his writing. Read many, read diversely, read from authors you don't like, read unknown authors, read poorly written books, and read random smaller "old web" style blog posts, like from https://bearblog.dev/discover/ or blog rolls or whatever.

sharkjacobs• 3 months ago

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.

vidarh• 3 months ago

I have a constant droning monologue that only stops when I sleep or meditate. But I also know at least one author who doesn't think in words at all, even when preparing to write or speak them.

the_gipsy• 3 months ago

You need more/better introspection.

lordleft2• 3 months ago

I've started doing this as a kind of creative and mental exercise. It can imbue even a day filled with drudgery with something worthwhile.

demaga• 3 months ago

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.

frereubu2• 3 months ago

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).

delis-thumbs-7e3• 3 months ago

In Our Times has episodes on him as well, naturally: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bz77 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wgkz4

dredmorbius2• 3 months ago

There's one further piece by Runciman (the podcast's creator) on Orwell's "The Lion and the Unicorn", referenced in the series above:

<https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/history-of-ideas%3A-george...>

I'll also note: David Runciman is one of my absolute favourite podcasters. I'd discovered him through his earlier London Review of Boooks-affiliated Talking Politics, and followed his transition to Past, Present, Future. He's also contributed to several episodes of Intelligence Squared UK and a few free-standing lectures and YouTube videos.

For those not familiar with him:

- He's British, and a former professor of politics (largely political history) at the University of Cambridge. He left that post to pursue podcasting full-time.

- The podcasts (PPF, TP) focus largely on political history and philosophy, ranging from Greek times through the present. For the most part Runciman doesn't dwell on the Sturm und Drang of current events, though he'll occasionally reference them or discuss them in context. At the same time, the background he brings to these events has proved tremendously useful to me. Runciman provides the context missing from so much contemporary discussion and news.

- Runciman's analysis tends strongly to avoid the trite and commonplace. He treats friendly voices critically (as in the series referenced above on Orwell), and those he views poorly, fairly. Among the latter includes an exceedingly insightful analysis of Atlas Shrugged, a book he takes a dim opinion of but nonetheless revealed several points I and a friend, both of whom had read the work numerous times, were surprised by. (The points are well-backed by evidence.) He rarely makes glaring errors (one of the few I can think of was in a recent discussion of the Hiroshima bombing in which WWII-era B-29s are consistently referred to as Cold-War era B-52s), and in one piece where Runciman gives an account of Max Weber's definition of government, as that entity which has "the claim to the legitimate use on physical force" (emphasis added), which is often bastardised to "monopoly on violence". The latter characterisation utterly misplaces the focus from legitimacy to force, and is baldly false. Runciman's account appears in this episode: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>, at about 15 minutes.

- He's a peer of the realm, 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford, and related by marriage to John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, better knonwn as Lord Acton, famous for the dictum "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I find this delightful, though Runciman himself doesn't make a point of this (the relationship is revealed via associated Wikipedia articles).

As someone who's immensely fatigued by current political chaos and much news, Runciman's information and delivery (admittedly dry and quite RP, both of which I see as good aspects) are a breath of fresh air. Unreserved recommendation.

dredmorbius2• 3 months ago

Oh, and one more element: Runciman likes doing mini-series on various themes. Past ones have been: political books, films, and trials. A history of bad ideas (interesting, and a few countering my own viewpoints), counterfactuals (what if things had gone differently), great essays, revolutionary ideas, globalisation. Those are indexed under tabs on the pod's homepage:

<https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes>

frereubu2• 3 months ago

Yep, PPF Ideas is the only podcast I actually pay for to get the extra episodes!

jamiejquinn3• 3 months ago

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.

rixed2• 3 months ago

Why makes this statement racist?

jamiejquinn3• 3 months ago

Disregarding genuine differences between cultures and intentially treating those cultures as identical is racist. Turns out he did come around later in life - https://www.thenational.scot/news/23716840.george-orwells-an...

lordleft2• 3 months ago

I love Orwell, he ranks as one of my favorite writers, especially his non-fiction. Unfortunately, I think too many writers take his famed writing advice as doctrine, and ignore the possibilies of a richer and more elaborate style.

rawgabbit2• 3 months ago

In my opinion, Orwell had already wrestled with and composed a coherent philosophy. His writing style was a tool to articulate his philosophy and viewpoint.

Those who are still formulating their thoughts and putting it down on paper will come across as incoherent no matter which writing style they adopt.

conorcleary• 3 months ago

https://www.letairun.com/creations/why-i-write

mannanj• 3 months ago

About 2 years ago, I took a break after 8 years in tech, and taught/supported in public schools as a substitute. One of the first books we covered in 8th grade English was Animal Farm.

It left such a stark experience with me how my interpretation of that and what was happening in the world at that time, with the school & teacher and thus projected-onto-the-students interpretation, was so different and obviously this in itself in a meta way was what Orwell warned about in his works.

This top county, one of the richest public schools in Maryland, was teaching its students to interpret even Animal Farm in a biased and blind way unable to see their current political circumstances as the issue Orwell warned about and myopically focusing in on the Russian/overseas/communist philosophy as the only ones Orwell could have referred to in his works. I knew there was brainwashing I encountered growing up in any public school, experiencing it this fundamentally deep was visceral.

CobrastanJorji• 3 months ago

I wonder, is this surfacing because of the reviews of the new Animal Farm animated film? I found this review to be a good little read: https://consequence.net/2026/04/animal-farm-review-andy-serk...

elektronika• 3 months ago

The state of the UK suggests to me that Orwell's writing was as much an expression of British post-colonial anxieties as it was an indictment of the USSR. His books are no doubt pushed in US education system for their nonpartisan anti-communism.

1984 was surprisingly prescient about automatically generated propaganda. The slop deluge we're going through certainly echoes the "Novel-Writing Machines".

AIorNot• 3 months ago

Great writer, in this age of AI writing, we must not forgot the power of a human voice and the wonderful subtlety of intention and purpose.

also, sad that he died at 46 of tuberculosis, what a waste.

kaashif• 3 months ago

I write because I just find it hard to form long, coherent thoughts without writing.

When trying to think on the fly, I often say something jumbled and nonsensical, then make another attempt after thinking for a second.

I need that editing step to even get my paragraphs or long sentences just right.

But why am I writing this comment? I don't know.

nektro• 3 months ago

Jacob Geller put out an essay today on 1984

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cdowB9udPc

Why I Write (1946)

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