writers.com newsletter

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Writers on the Net
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Vol. 7, No. 4
April 2004

IN THIS ISSUE:

WHY WRITE?
~~CLASS SCHEDULE~~ [to current class schedule page]
TIPS: Strunk's # 13
ROOTS: travel, travail, tour
~~NEWSLINKS~~

WHY WRITE?

George Orwell considered the question in an essay, "Why Do I Write?" (first published in "Gangrel, No. 4" in the summer of 1946.) He came up with one of the most thoughtful responses you are likely to find. It reads, in part:

"...Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

"1) Sheer egoism.
Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen -- in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all -- and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

"2) Aesthetic enthusiasm.
Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

"3) Historical impulse.
Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

"4) Political purpose -- using the word "political" in the widest possible sense.
Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

"It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time...

"...All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. 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 nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality."

Orwell latter explained in a letter that " -- a sense of political purpose was at first the least motivation in me. But living in the age I did, my political orientation gradually became focussed and I realised I most wanted to make political writing into an art -- combining the aesthetic impulse with the need to expose the injustices I saw around me."

(You can read the entire essay at: http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/whywrite.html.)

WRITING TIP: Strunk on "Conciseness"

One of the most often-quoted rules of William Strunk's "The Elements of Style" is number 13:

Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

* Many expressions in common use violate this principle:

-- the question as to whether = whether (the question whether)
-- there is no doubt but that = no doubt (doubtless)
-- used for fuel purposes = used for fuel
-- he is a man who = he
-- in a hasty manner = hastily
-- this is a subject which = this subject
-- His story is a strange one. = His story is strange.

* In especial the expression the fact that should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs.

-- owing to the fact that = since (because)
-- in spite of the fact that = though (although)
-- call your attention to the fact that = remind you (notify you)
-- I was unaware of the fact that = I was unaware that (did not know)
-- the fact that he had not succeeded = his failure
-- the fact that I had arrived = my arrival

* "Who is," "which was," and the like are often superfluous.

-- His brother, who is a member of the same firm = His brother, a member of the same firm
-- Trafalgar, which was Nelson's last battle = Trafalgar, Nelson's last battle
* As positive statement is more concise than negative, and the active voice more concise than the passive...

* A common violation of conciseness is the presentation of a single complex idea, step by step, in a series of sentences which might to advantage be combined into one.

(Example:)
Macbeth was very ambitious. This led him to wish to become king of Scotland. The witches told him that this wish of his would come true. The king of Scotland at this time was Duncan. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth murdered Duncan. He was thus enabled to succeed Duncan as king. (55 words.)

(Corrected:)
Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth achieved his ambition and realized the prediction of the witches by murdering Duncan and becoming king of Scotland in his place. (26 words.)

(The 1918 edition of "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr. can be found at: http://www.bartleby.com/141/.)

ROOTS
"travel, travail, tour"

Those on academic schedules take a break in early spring and often travel to escape the travails of daily life.

The Old French word "traveillier" or "travaillier" became "travail," meaning "to toil," "to work hard," with the underlying meaning of laboring so intensely that you suffer physical pain. "Travail" still means "strenuous labor" as wells as "tribulation or agony; anguish; torment" and "parturition," the concluding state of pregnancy from the onset of labor to the birth of a child. Although it is not used as often these days, in older writings you will come across references to a woman's "severe travail" or her "easy travail."

"Travaillier" came from a Latin word, "tripalium," for a three-staked instrument of torture (tripalis = tri, "three" + palus , "a stake"). We've not yet found an exact description of this device, but it involved three wooden poles and a great deal of pain.

In English, the first recorded use of "travel" ("travelen") was in the 14th century and travel during the 1300s was a difficult, even torturous, undertaking.

The late Daniel J. Boorstin wrote in "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events" in America (Harper & Row 1964):
"There is a wonderful, but neglected precision in these words. The old English noun 'travel' (in the sense of a journey) was originally the same word as 'travail' (meaning 'trouble,' 'work,' or 'torment').... Significantly, too, the word 'tour' in 'tourist' was derived by back-formation from the Latin 'tornus,' which in turn came from the Greek word for a tool describing a circle. The traveler, then was working at something; the tourist was a pleasure-seeker. The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him."

A tour is literally "a going round; a journey in a circuit; as in a tour of Europe." Middle English, from Middle French, from Old French tourn, tour "lathe, circuit, turn" from tornare, Latin, "to turn on a lathe," from tornus lathe, from Greek tornos. The fundamental sense is "circular movement."

QUOTATION: "Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic." -- Julie Burchill, British journalist, author. "Sex and Sensibility," introduction (1992).

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