ords, reading is just one weapon in a writer's creative arsenal.
Given that reading works of others is simply one "weapon", one needs to examine George Orwell's essay "Why I Write", where he says "I think there are four great motives for writingà..Sheer egoismàEsthetic enthusiasmàHistorical impulseà.political purposeà.When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write because there is something I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern to get a hearing" (Orwell 1947 314-15).
That doesn't mean reading is not valuable. The right kind of reading, of course. W. Somerset Maugham writes: "I heartily wish that in my youth I had had som
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