Why I Write

I really enjoyed reading the essay "Why I Write" by Orwell. He gives four motives for being a writer: egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose.

As far as my motives in my writing for this class, I agree with his four. I like the idea of being a journalist partly because of ego. I wouldn't mind recognition accompanied with a byline, showing "the grownups who snubbed me in childhood," and more so the peers, that I know things about the world that they don't.

However, I wouldn't say ego is a primary reason I'd like to write for a living. Frankly I don't really care all that much about what people think about me, I care more about the political purpose of aiding in informing the public. "A desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after." With my final feature, my goal is to write a piece that informs the consumer of the problems of the American food supply using local foods as the solution to the conflict. With this piece, I've struggled with the issues presented in the John Stewart piece on Marin's blog. Some think that John Stewart does a better job of informing his audience because he doesn't bother giving merit to nonfactual information presented by the other side. The example of global warming is given. Journalists might write an article about global warming, giving 50% of the words to scientists who have proven its severity, and 50% to politicians who argued against its existence, despite facts proving their fallacy. In writing my piece, I haven't had any motivation to give substantial space to an opposing viewpoint, because all of my research proves them wrong. Why tell the reader both the facts I know are correct and the opinions I know are factually incorrect?

Throughout the quarter I have developed a motive toward Orwell's second point of "aesthetic enthusiasm." I now enjoy writing for the challenge of creating rhythm in a story. I never appreciated the artistic value of nonfiction writing before, and studying it has made me dislike uncreative academic writing even more so than I did before. I only wish I had more time to spend crafting my story and less time on required boring readings for my other class...