Skip to main content

George Orwell on Writing

20 Quotes on Writing: George Orwell from www.azevedosreviews.com
Luis Azevedo started Azevedo's Reviews since the beginning of 2012, covering his interests in film, literature, writing, directing and stand-up comedy. Excerpted:

George Orwell (1903 – 1950)

1. “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
13. ”Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.”
17. ”The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.”
18. “A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mari Popova reviews: Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Living to Tell the Tale"

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ Read all: http://www.brainpickings.org "If you're going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones…After all, there are better ways to starve to death." Gabriel García Márquez  (March 6, 1927–April 17, 2014) is one of  the greatest authors of all time , and yet he had an unlikely path to greatness. His life-story is an emboldening antidote to the tyrannical myth that the crib is the crucible of creative genius...

Looking Up...

Above All, Happy Writing, JJ I am convinced we are all on a spectrum from "Wounded" to "Recovering" Creatives. Being creative and wounded seem to coexist as a part of our human condition. Observation reveals that even as functional Creatives, we collude, propagate and inflict wounding on ourselves and other creatives. Putting malice aside, (or perhaps even including it), if ignorance can be  simplified to the individual "ignoring what is within",  then who really can be 100% beyond its dark, sticky reach 100% of the time. With this in mind, it is a  life-saving effort for sincere 'working' creatives to expect, even anticipate resistance.  And at least, to include the work of having to transcend it. The more insistent we are at our creative endeavours, no end of obstacles will arise both from within our own complex unconscious and outside; from others in our range of influence, and beyond. SO, what to do with all these voices? Nay-sa

UP A Tree, With a Good Book...

Think of your young readers this way: up a tree, with a good book and worried that the sixth book in the series marks the end, because then what will he do!  All 6 Island Fiction titles are available as e-books at: https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/  or jump to Time Swimmer by Gerald Haussman, one of my all time favorite teen titles: https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/timeswimmer.html Or why not kick start August reading with: Night of the Indigo by Michael Holgate which won a Silver Moonbeam Medal for "Teen Spirituality" https://macmillancaribbeanebooks.com/night-of-the-indigo.html Pictured: Battle of the Labyrinth, Percy Jackson Photo credit and copyright: J. Johnson What to read when Percy Jackson comes to an end? Now young Caribbean readers have a series rich in speculative fiction sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism. Check out all 6 titles of the  Caribbean's first-ever teen series with cinematic writing that even reluctant readers will