As an aspiring novelist, the image below is a great source of inspiration.
This is a photograph of George Orwell’s original manuscript pages for 1984. Now, I regard 1984 as one of the finest pieces of literature of the last century. It is well written, exciting and deep and dark and prophetic. But look at those pages. They are riddled with markings and notes and deletions.
The thing is, no one gets it right the first time. Not even George Orwell. The reason this is such an inspiration is that I now feel better about the project I’m working on now. It’s not perfect (not even close) but with a lot of work and revision, I’ll get there.
Looks like it took Orwell a few tries as well.
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Wow! You’re right! It’s always inspirational when you see a famous writer’s work.
Glad to hear you’re an aspiring writer. Me too! :)
Great blog you’ve got here! I’ll be sure to follow! :)
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Hey, thanks.
Good luck with the writing.
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You’re welcome! :)
Thanks! :)
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….and you have to symapathize with the poor copy editors…..what a job deciphering that lot!
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I think those are his own markings, as he was working on the first draft.
But yes, I guess the copyeditors had a harder time back when writers submitted hand-written first drafts.
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Very inspiring, thanks for sharing! Gives the rest of us hope ;)
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Yes it does.
Thanks for reading the post.
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I haven’t read 1984 but now it’s up on my list. Ha! Anyone who could make a mess out of the first draft like this sure must have made at the very least, a good, sensible output (thank goodness we now have computers!).
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1984 is really good. One of the important books of modern literature.
If nothing else, you’ll get all those Big Brother references.
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