By C. Jewel Garcia
According to the novelist George Orwell’s essay Why I Write there are four reasons to write. The first is ego, the second reason is aesthetics, the third is historical, and the last and most noble is political. Now political has become a hot button word but writing political in Orwell’s mind was simply writing with politics in mind or with an opinion on the world clearly thought out. Everything written is political in nature if intended or not because everything written tells a story about the world. Orwell simply wanted people to write with the world in mind.
Writing about what the world is with a direction of what it should or should not be clearly thought out is writing politically, but James Baldwin saw the purpose of writing to be more specific. In his essay The Creative Process he explains that the writer is an artis whose purpose is to show the world the truth about itself in order to make a better world. To him the world had to recognize its problems and what was good about it in order to come to a better place and it was the artis in particular the writing artists job to show the world this even if it punished the writer for doing this.
Essentially what each of these novelists are suggesting is that leadership comes from writing. To understand how you would first have to understand what leadership is and what it is not.
Leadership is not managing people. Managing people is telling people where to go and what to do in a way that keeps things stable. This is not leading. A good article that explains the difference is What Leaders Really Do. This article explains that what leaders do is prepare people for change. Writers constantly are preparing people for change. That is exactly what Orwell and Baldwin are writing about putting forward plans for change or a direction to change towards or away from.
Conscience writers write to change the world in little or big ways. They want to see the world change. They see themselves as having a great gift they should use to try to make a difference. The best writers will do this even if it puts them through hellish circumstances. They will continue writing as long as they can.
Writers are compelled to write despite the most dismal circumstances. They play God in every meaning of the word. To start, they play God by making up whole worlds that they feel compelled by some unearthly force to make. Second, they play God with their own personal story using parts of it to lean on to fuel their writings. Last, they play God in this world with real time, effort, and danger. Yes, writers feel compelled to write perhaps because they need to play God for themselves. Or perhaps this is a side effect of writing in this limiting world. Whatever the case, a large part of what compels them is the way they contextualize their own stories. This can easily be seen in the essays of both Orwell and Baldwin. Finding and owning the narrative to your own personal story is indeed a part of what compelled writers from before Charles Dickens. In the article What’s Your Story? Herminia Ibarra and Kent Lineback explain that finding this story is key to navigating through change which is what writers are constantly doing as leaders. Writers need to know their story to know what to write and how to write. Without knowing story writers are directionless. With a story writers have the power to play God.
How a person writes with technique and structure or even politically is an unending question of debate. I am not going to speak about this part of how does one write. Rather I would like to speak about getting to the point where a person can write. This requires knowing oneself. The article Managing Oneself deals with this. In effect it explains for any career a person should know how they work and their values. In writing this is more essential even if you are not writing for pay. A writer first must know they are a writer. Writers cannot function without writing. As I said before writers are compelled to write if they are not writing they are tortured. Next, they must learn how they write at their best or at the best they can given their environment, because even writers cannot write if they are actually being tortured. Finally, and most importantly they need to know their values or at very least be searching for their values. A writer cannot write without this knowledge. They need to know what they believe to point the way to lead towards or away from. Once they have this knowledge, they cannot stop writing.
A writer writes because they have something to say that they can communicate in no way without writing. They have something to say that is so compelling it will keep them up at night or wake them up early before the sun comes up. They have something to say that they know the world needs to hear or see or both in order to make the world a better place. They can do this because they know themselves. They need to do this even if it causes them physical or psychological pain. They need to do this because they are a writer and artist at heart. They need to do this because they love something in this world so dearly writing needs to be done. The writer writes because there is no way around writing and because writing must be done. As long as the world needs writers the writer will write. This world will never not need writers, so, the writer’s work is never done.
Baldwin, J. (1962). The Creative Process, Creative America, Ridge Press. https://openspaceofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/baldwin-creative-process.pdf
Drucker, P. F. (2005, January) Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2005/01/managing-oneself
Ibarra, I & Lineback, K. (2005, January). What’s Your Story? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2005/01/whats-your-story
Kotter, J. P. (2001, December). What Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2001/12/what-leaders-really-do
Orwell, G. (1946). Why I Write. Gangrel, 4. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/