Rethinkpress.com — Charles Bukowski’s “Secret” of Good Writing. The Nature of Fun: David Foster Wallace on Why Writers Write. By Maria Popova “Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable.”
On the heels of the highly anticipated new David Foster Wallace biography comes Both Flesh and Not: Essays (public library) — a collection spanning twenty years of Wallace’s nonfiction writing on subjects as wide-ranging as math, Borges, democracy, the U.S. Open, and the entire spectrum of human experience in between. F. Scott Fitzgerald on the Secret of Great Writing. Henry Miller’s Reflections on Writing. Why I Write: George Orwell's Four Motives for Creation. By Maria Popova “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.”
Literary legend Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, remains best remembered for authoring the cult-classics Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but he was also a formidable, masterful essayist. Among his finest short-form feats is the 1946 essay Why I Write (public library) — a fine addition to other timeless insights on writing, including Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers. I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development.
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited.