From Sickness to Clarity

Evan Swensen
August 25, 2025

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” George Orwell spoke these words with the raw honesty of a man who knew the cost of literature. He stripped away illusions of artistic ease and revealed a truth writers hesitate to admit. Books demand more than time and ink; they demand pieces of the writer’s soul. Orwell’s life and words remind us writing is not simply craft but sacrifice, often paid in health, solitude, and relentless effort.

In the mid-1930s, Orwell carried this truth to Spain. Determined to fight fascism, he joined a militia during the Spanish Civil War. The dream of solidarity quickly fractured. Bullets tore through alliances as much as through bodies. Orwell himself was shot through the throat, a wound nearly silencing him forever. Doctors doubted his voice would return, yet his instinct to testify outlived injury. He recovered enough to write Homage to Catalonia, an account publishers initially dismissed because it exposed bitter truths about factional betrayal. For Orwell, writing the book was like reopening the wound. Each page forced him to revisit betrayal, fear, and disillusionment. Yet he pressed forward, convinced silence would be worse. His metaphor of illness was not exaggeration—it was the lived toll of forcing truth onto paper, no matter how much it bled.

Years later, Orwell faced another enemy: tuberculosis. By the 1940s his health was failing, but his pen refused to rest. He retreated to the bleak island of Jura off Scotland’s coast, seeking solitude to complete Nineteen Eighty-Four. The sea winds howled against stone walls while his body crumbled from within. Friends begged him to stop. He coughed blood, grew thinner by the week, and still forced himself to the typewriter. The novel took shape as his strength drained away. Orwell was living his own metaphor—writing as illness, illness as writing. He understood the cost and paid it willingly, believing the world needed his warning about truth and tyranny. He wrote until he could no longer breathe without pain, until words themselves became his final offering.

The books born of this struggle reshaped the way societies talk about power and deception. Animal Farm cut through political doublespeak with the sharp edge of allegory. Nineteen Eighty-Four etched terms into the global conscience—“Big Brother,” “thoughtcrime,” “doublethink.” These were not abstract inventions but tools for survival in a world where governments bent truth to their will. Orwell gave people language to resist manipulation. His exhausting effort, his willingness to endure the illness of creation, created works that continue to arm readers against lies and tyranny. Few writers have given so much of themselves while demanding so much from readers. His books became more than stories—they became societal mirrors, uncomfortably clear.

When Orwell compared writing to illness, he was not indulging in self-pity. He was telling the truth as he always did, without varnish. Writing drained him, but it also defined him. The paradox remains: creation injures, yet creation heals; it isolates yet connects; it burdens, yet leaves a legacy. Orwell’s pen carried both agony and necessity. His words remind us writing matters most when it feels least bearable, when the effort itself becomes proof of devotion to truth.

Orwell’s books endure not because they were easy to write but because they were impossible to ignore. Read Homage to Catalonia to feel the grit of his battlefield honesty. Read Animal Farm to see how simple fables reveal deep corruption. Read Nineteen Eighty-Four to understand why truth must be defended. Then take up your own pen. Accept the weight, embrace the struggle, and write words capable of outlasting you. In that struggle lies the power to shape minds, stir hearts, and keep the light of truth alive.

The Power of Authors: A Rallying Cry for Today’s Writers to Recognize Their Power, Rise to Their Calling, and Write with Moral Conviction, written by Evan and Lois Swensen with a foreword by Jane L. Evanson, Professor Emerita at Alaska Pacific University, launches this September. You’ve been reading its heartbeat in these Monday messages — soon you can hold the book in your hands.