Why I Write - refections on the role of ego in women's writing

It is one hundred years since the publication of Ulysees this week. I confess that, though I bought the book as an English student back in 1990, I never actually finished it. Like lots of readers, I found it challenging, confusing and obtuse and I just didn’t have the stamina. I got my post-modernist kicks from the more feminine perspective of Woolf instead and I think Ulysees went the way of the other unread classics in the Big Book Cull of 2017; on moving house, I decided to get rid of all the worthy tomes that, realistically, I was unlikely to ever read. I kind of regret that now and am almost tempted to buy another copy of Ulysees because, reading new articles about it, it feels like a gap in my education that I should perhaps fill, if only so that I can understand the feminist perspective about the role of Molly Bloom in a largely masculine-driven narrative. Actually, time’s tight as a working single mum - maybe I’ll just skip to the end to read the female character’s voice.

A friend told me this week that apparently, according to Joyce’s nephew, the author deliberately planned Ulysees to be obtuse so that he could guarantee that it would still be read and studied in a hundred years’ time. That’s some admirable foresight he had! It got me thinking about what motivates us to write (an endless fascination of mine) and whether the urge to create a legacy is a driving force for anyone and everyone who is called to put pen to paper. It’s an idea that’s explored by another literary giant, George Orwell, in his book Why I Write, which I’ve also been re-reading this week.

I shared Orwell’s thoughts with my Monday Morning Motivation group yesterday, largely because I was keen to explore the idea of writing as a route to immortality; I was particularly interested in Orwell and my group’s thoughts on the role of egoism in writing. According to Orwell, there are four main urges that motivate the writer: a - sheer egoism, b - aesthetic enthusiasm, c- historical impulse and d- political purpose. I shared his theory with the group of assembled women (it isn’t always women) and asked them to choose, like they were doing a Cosmo quiz, whether their motivation for writing was mostly a, b, c or d. The discussion that followed was really interesting, not just from a writing perspective but also from the perspective of gender, though we all agreed that there are as many reasons for writing as there are writers and that Orwell has definitely missed out e and f – the writers who write for self-knowledge or just for pleasure with no thought of a reader at all.

I had to admit that, (aside from e and f), I’m mostly a’s and b’s. There are times, certainly, when I use my wordsmithery to raise awareness of political issues and, if you think of ‘political’ with a small p and rebrand it as ‘awareness-raising’, I actually do this quite a bit, particularly in my writing about grief. My writing sometimes aims to change our stiff-upper lip culture, to talk about subjects that are taboo and to challenge injustice. But I also write purely because I love language and words, because I delight in their selection and placing in the same way that an artist delights in colour and form. As for the egoism, I can’t deny that I have an urge to see my name on the covers of books and that I don’t want to be invisible in this world.

Here's what Orwell says about the egoism of the writer:

‘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 that this is not a motive and a strong one…..The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. At around the age of thirty they 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, wilful 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-centred than journalists, though less interested in money.’

I certainly belong in this class and this wilful individuality and desire to forge my own path is something that I observe in myself, particularly when talking to non-writers. It’s even more prominent for me when dating! I find that I just can’t relate to people for whom a life of routine, domesticity and Netflix is enough. And that they can’t relate to this driving force in me – the need to create, grow, excel, achieve as if time is running out and it’s the only thing that matters. Writing is my very life force. When I spoke of my work to one man on a dating site, he said “that’s what you do. I want to know who you are.” I was completely baffled and explained that there is no division between my professional and personal self. A writer is who I am to my very core. I can live without a man (and it seems I I have to) but I couldn’t live without writing at all and, day by day, I’m becoming bolder in what I share. Women often talk of becoming invisible as they age but I feel I get more and more visible with each year and my wilful desire to remain an individual gets stronger as I get older and not weaker. Though I crave love, partnership and community, I’m increasingly loathe to sacrifice myself to achieve it. Perhaps because, as a single mother, there is already so much unavoidable drudgery. Yes, I am and have always been wilful.

 As I asked the women in the group what motivated them, they mostly admitted with some chagrin that egoism was there for them too. None of them saw themselves as political writers, though I would disagree with their self-perception as they all write about serious issues that challenge and inform. Some are more preoccupied with aesthetics than others but all of them have powerful stories to tell. It struck me as they were speaking that, traditionally, historical and political motives for creation have been the domain of the male writer and that they have been given weight accordingly. Women’s work (which has often been concerned with love, family and the domestic) has been minimised and forgotten. We’re frequently apologetic as women if we’re not writing about the ‘serious’ business of war and science, and the women in Monday Morning Motivation were no exception. They were certainly apologetic that their ambitions were not so lofty and that they were, in fact, as Orwell suggests ‘vain and self-centred’ enough simply to want their voices to be heard.

And then it occurred to me that, for women, egoism is actually a political act in itself. It has always been taboo for women to put themselves forward. For centuries they’ve been told that their words have no place out there in the world and that their personal experience is not valid or worthy. As women, we’ve been trained to be quiet and to put others’ needs above our own. So, I concluded, a bit of egoism is nothing to be ashamed of, especially for women. We deserve to stand out as much as anyone else. There’s certainly a veritable army of gifted, wilful women in The Writers Workshop community whose voices should to be heard.

So I didn’t get round to reading Joyce. So what? Woolf’s writing, I’d argue, was just as valuable and, for me, revolutionary. It was Woolf who made me realise that I had to something to say, that I could be a writer and not just the muse of whichever male artistic ego I was in thrall to at the time. It was Woolf who inspired me to create a room of my own. I’ve yet to find out what Molly Bloom had to say, but it’s my belief that there’s room for a little more egoism in women writers. Without it our voices will not be heard or remembered at all and women’s histories will continue to be lost and marginalised. Here’s to more wilful individualism in women.