Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Orwell makes this remark in his essay “Why I Write” (1946), composed just after World War II and shortly before the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the essay he reflects on his development as a writer—from early literary ambitions and a sense of outsiderhood, through his experiences in Burma, poverty in Paris and London, and the Spanish Civil War—to the political urgency that shaped his mature work. The line appears as part of his candid description of the writing process: not as genteel inspiration but as physically and mentally draining labor, undertaken under an inner compulsion that he portrays as partly irrational and only partly under conscious control.

The quote demystifies authorship by likening book-writing to illness: prolonged, painful, and depleting. Yet Orwell insists that writers persist because of an internal “demon”—a metaphor for compulsion, obsession, or vocation—that cannot be fully explained or resisted. The tension between suffering and necessity suggests that serious writing is not merely a career choice but a psychological drive, one that can override comfort and common sense. In the larger argument of “Why I Write,” this private compulsion is joined to public purpose: Orwell implies that the same force that makes writing arduous also makes it urgent, especially when the writer feels morally or politically compelled to bear witness.