On Nothing & Kindred Subjects

MP3 Audio CD. On Nothing & Kindred Subjects

ON THE PLEASURE OF TAKING UP ONE'S PEN


Among the sadder and smaller pleasures of this world I count this
pleasure: the pleasure of taking up one's pen.

It has been said by very many people that there is a tangible pleasure
in the mere act of writing: in choosing and arranging words. It has
been denied by many. It is affirmed and denied in the life of Doctor
Johnson, and for my part I would say that it is very true in some rare
moods and wholly false in most others. However, of writing and the
pleasure in it I am not writing here (with pleasure), but of the
pleasure of taking up one's pen, which is quite another matter.

Note what the action means. You are alone. Even if the room is
crowded (as was the smoking-room in the G.W.R. Hotel, at Paddington,
only the other day, when I wrote my "Statistical Abstract of
Christendom"), even if the room is crowded, you must have made
yourself alone to be able to write at all. You must have built up
some kind of wall and isolated your mind. You are alone, then; and
that is the beginning.