George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), from his essay “Why I Write“:
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject-matter will be determined by the age he lives in – at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own – but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, or in some perverse mood: but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living.
He posits four often shifting motivations for writing:
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on 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 business men – 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 abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, 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.
I am sometimes asked about how/why to start writing. I think writing is great (as a hobby, practice, therapy, creative outlet, whatever). The biggest hurdle to starting writing for others as a habit is that, in many cases, the dominant motivation is egoism. And we should be okay acknowledging that, but the problem is that, odds are, when you write, no one is going to read and no one is going to care, at least for a while. There’s no guarantee of ever achieving any sort of external validation. When the ego isn’t fed, the writer can lose steam. Most blogs are abandoned within 6 months or so.
I would add a layer to Orwell’s point. Sometimes the ego can also be a matter of internal validation. To challenge yourself to make something and to actually make it. And that form of egoism (i.e. “I can do hard things”) doesn’t rely on external validation.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
Yes.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
Also yes.
(iv) Political purpose – using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
I would also add a rhyming layer here, and that would be: writing to learn how you think. Sometimes the desire is not just to convince others but first to convince yourself.