Friday, May 09, 2008

writing - an asthetic experience

Æsthetic 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.

- George Orwell, Why I Write


The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect your reader precisely as you wish.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

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