Today it is time for some George Orwell, taken from his essay “Why I Write“–which is mostly about the struggle of finding the balance between message and aesthetic quality but also shows us the struggle of the artist in general–the pain that comes with the passion.

I initially found this essay in the book Eight Modern Essayists–great essays in this one for sure and I would urge you to buy yourself a copy because you won’t regret it as it also contains essays by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, E.B. White, James Baldwin, and Joan Didion.

Here is what I needed to read today:

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. Good prose is like a windowpane.