The Weapon Was a Pen, But We Need Motive to Make a Case
Why I Write: George Orwell on an Author’s 4 Main Motives
An excerpt listing one of those motives:
"(i) 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."