I’m often asked to consider – more often than not by myself –
why I write. Why do I want to be an author?
I read
something yesterday responding to something George Orwell once wrote. This
being that successful authors don’t write for pleasure, or for love of the
craft, but they are driven by some inescapable demon that keeps their mind
focussed in divine purpose levels of concentration to see an idea and be
compelled to commit it to paper.
Orwell
may be one of my favourite writers; I was blessed with excellent English
teachers so I was raised on Animal Farm
followed by 1984. I can’t profess to
say I’ve read the passage of essay or speech where Orwell actually gave this
view on writing. If I am to believe in the man who wrote some of my favourite
books then I’m inclined to say that these are merely the words of a columnist
who doesn't love his job the way I would if I were lucky enough to have it.
Having said that, I don’t need to love the man to love his work – look at Liam
Gallagher.
I write
because I love it. The simple moment of having an idea can make my day. The
completion of another chapter, another scene, blog, article or even a tweet
perfectly balanced with sarcasm and humour; ideally fit without a character to
spare. However, I would never say I’d be completely satisfied if everything I’ve
ever written stayed on my computer. Almost, but still. That’s why I read.
When I
read the news, just taking today as an example, I can list the things going on
the world that scare me, sadden me and offend me. We have the Oscars, 97% of films
written and produced by men this year. We have ISIS, 3 more women abandoning
radiology degrees and lives here off to join them. We have the imminent threat
of war from the East. Russia seems poised to cause some sort of international
incident. The term ‘end of the world’ gets bandied about in something other
than a dystopian novel, and it’s not something I want to be reading when I’m
watching Mary Berry make scones on BBC1. The oceans are full of plastic,
children are increasingly becoming depressed and killing themselves because of
the pressure heaped on them during exams. Let’s widen that, the education
system in this country is under threat from people who don’t believe books –
the things I live by - are important. The NHS is buggered. All the while we
have a bunch of toffs and shadow-toffs engaged in childish arguments shouting ‘pick-me,
pick-me’ when I’m sat wondering why they don’t just set their decanters of wine
and chateramas aside and do something to fix the world depicted in the news
every morning.
The
list goes on. So I turn to books. Books warn us of dystopia and evidence
continually surfaces to suggest we’re travelling at breakneck speed towards
one. Some might say we live in one already.
But
fear not, I don’t wish to spread the doom the news media shoves down our
throats. If we examine books, we see new, exciting debut authors every day.
Books stare at the man-laden film world and hold up the big two fingers. We
have women heroines in abundance. We have even more women writers and we, the
readers who think them wonderful for their minds, not – E! Entertainment - for
how pedicured their feet are.
Books
offer ideas that have us believe a better world, either by showing us that
world or holding up a mirror on our own, so we might change our paths and
create one that doesn't look quite so bad. They offer us solutions to war,
cures to terror, visions of a world where innocents aren't murdered and people
far cleverer than you or me be the change they want to see.
So I
turn to these. These fragments I have
shored against my ruins, as TS Eliot famously, if not a little
melodramatically, once wrote. When modern life attempts to bring you down in
the guise of a newspaper, you can look away; peel open the pages of an old
favourite, listen to a fantastic song or flick on the best on screen and
realise that things aren't quite so bad.
So
I would ask Mr Farage when he disregards the arts because he might not be
intelligent enough to put down his pint and pick up Animal Farm instead, I’d hope that he’d feel the guilt shared by
thousands that their reflection has a snout.
