Writing about Margaret Atwood & George Orwell

For my MA on Creative Writing we were asked to research the career paths of two favourite writers. How they first got published, their day jobs, how much they have been published and whether they have written about their process as writers etc.

I am planning on writing an essay on Margaret Atwood for an assignment and writing a sequel to Nineteen Eight-four for another, so I chose Atwood and Orwell for this exercise. Refreshing myself on Atwood’s background would be useful. And knowing Orwell’s background may also help. Plus, I’ve read a lot of books by them both.

At this point my strong belief in fate throws in a twist. I had decided to call the essay on Atwood “Who does Margaret Atwood think she is?” As a working title it felt like it might have legs. Subsequently, I rapidly start trying to get through Negotiating with the Dead, her book on writing for writers (as per the brief above) and what is the first chapter of that book called? It’s called “Orientation: Who do you think you are?“. Maybe the writing Gods are on my side for this.

Margaret Atwood

I’m a huge fan of Margaret Atwood, her versatility (even if you look at her novels alone) is astounding in my view. And then you add on the poetry, short stories, anthologies, teaching etc… There is much to admire.

A Canadian, she was born in 1939 in Ottawa. Her mother was a nutritionist and her father an entomologist. It is possible, I think, to see the echoes of this background in some of her writing. For example, the novel Cat’s Eye, follows a group of children growing up in Canada; while Oryx and Crake features the scientific realms of genetic manipulation and cloning.

She is perhaps best known for The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian or speculative fiction novel about a religious society, Gilead, that oppresses and persecutes women. It’s been the subject of television adaptations and is regularly drawn on to call out the more worrying trends in society today, even though it was written in 1985, almost 40 years ago. Atwood has famously said she’d written nothing in it that hasn’t actually happened. Sadly, I fear there are often several real-life examples to choose from.

But to return to her versatility, even among the books of hers that I have personally read, you have the scientific predictions of Oryx and Crake (and its sequels), the political and religious warnings of The Handmaid’s Tale and its sequel The Testaments (which is more of a espionage/resistance-type story). But then the heart-wrenching account of a difficult childhood, rural life and bullying in Cat’s Eye, the historical (and real-life) nature of Alias Grace – which is a fictional tale based on an actual murder; the intrigue of Blind Assassin, and the shorter Penelopiad – which tells the story of Penelope, wife of Odysseus, offering an interesting perspective on the classic Homerian tale. This isn’t an exhaustive list either.

All deeply impressive for someone who didn’t attend school properly until the age of 12 and decided to write professionally aged only 16.

In terms of sharing her experience, one particular example of for Margaret Atwood is the online MasterClass: https://www.masterclass.com/classes/margaret-atwood-teaches-creative-writing which I was lucky enough to be able to work through. Alongside her book Negotiating with the Dead, which I have just started reading (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17647.Negotiating_with_the_Dead)

George Orwell

George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair, was born in 1903 in India.

Perhaps most famous for his significant, fateful and important dystopian novel Nineteen Eight-Four alongside the stunningly caustic appraisal of communism in Animal Farm, he’s nothing if not an author with a conscience – and in that regard he has something in common with Atwood. This is perhaps brought into the sharpish relief by the non-fiction Down and Out in Paris and London a book about the extreme poverty suffered by the lowliest in society.

He was educated in England, worked in Burma as a policeman, fought in the Spanish civil war, then as a journalist for the BBC. With all that going on its no surprise that he wasn’t as industrious in the literary sphere as Atwood, but as with Handmaids Tale, the foresight of Nineteen Eighty-Four led to him having great influence in the modern-day. The term “Orwellian” has been coined to describe a despotic, oppressive regime and is sadly too often found to be useful. Terms like doublethink, room 101 and big brother are also in widespread popular cultural use too, sadly.

Considering Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949 shortly before Orwell’s death in 1950, thus some 35 years ahead of its time, he has a chillingly enduring legacy.

For aspiring writers, Orwell has posited 6 pieces of advice:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell