Writer and Society

Writing as a career offers a range of professional awards. It enables people to express themselves, as well as to entertain, inform and influence others. With only a few tools – a typewriter, a pencil, and often a personal computer – a writer can have an impact on the surrounding world.

It goes without saying that most authors spend hundreds of hours perfecting their skills before they can sell any of their works. A person who wants to be a writer should set aside some time to write every day. Learning to express ideas clearly and effectively in writing takes a great deal of practice. Beginning writers should read many kinds of writing encountered every day and pay special attention to what they find most interesting. A beginning writer who reads much and carefully will develop an appreciation of different writing approaches and styles. In time, the writer can acquire a more flexible approach to his or her own works.

Successful authors write about subjects they know and understand. They sometimes take weeks or months revising or refining an article, poem or story. Beginning writers usually benefit from finding one or more friendly critics who will read their work and discuss their weak and strong points.

There are two main kinds of writers – staff writers and free-lance writers. Staff writers are the professional writers who work for a salary. Many earn a living as newspaper reporters or columnists. Others work as technical writers, who express the complex ideas of engineers and scientists in words that a non-expert can understand. Many staff writers prepare documents for public agencies. Others work as editors for book publishers, magazines and newspapers. Free-lance writers get paid only if a publisher buys their work. Free-lancers write most books – both fiction and non-fiction, as well as many magazine and newspaper articles. Many staff writers create free-lance writing and tell how to submit works for publication.

Writers are those people who create with hope to influence people’s minds and souls by way of discussing important and complex problems of the world. Conventionally an artist is not supposed to have responsibility for his talent or calling. But if Nature endows one and if this talent is found socially important, then it is no longer just a talent but a duty. And its mission is to affirm life in all its diversity, to assert everything the human soul has always aspired to. This is very important today when the question of moral values is arising in all its urgency. Spiritual values are not only a legacy coming down the centuries; they also must be created and enlarged today for the development of the civilization. That is why great writers always remain the contemporaries of later generations. Each new generation finds something new in their works, something concerning its own epoch. A great poet is always the voice of his epoch. Although he may glorify the heroic past, his eyes are always directed to the future.

Writers imbibe the spirit of their time and voice of their epoch. Any writer should express the most progressive tendencies of his epoch and the most advanced aspirations of the public circles, the cherished thoughts and hopes of ordinary people. Great writers confirmed however the concept of literature as an instrument of human enlightenment and thus it helps people greatly in learning to see the world through their own eyes. Conventionally an artist is not supposed to refer to his or her special talent or calling. But if Nature endows one and if thus talent is found socially important, then it s no longer just talent but a duty. And its mission is to affirm life in all its diversity, to assert everything the human soul has always aspired to.

Any writer influences public consciousness, revealing negative features of social life. He or she establishes and promotes ideals, forms public opinion.

Society influences the writers as well. Society serves as a source of inspiration. So far as the writer is a human being his outlook is influenced by social factors such as origin, upbringing, social and economic status. The writer is determined by current literary tendencies, literary style. A very important role is played by the influence of political regime and certain ideology. That's why by demand formulated by a social class the writer creates his works to satisfy the needs of the society. He takes into consideration popular patterns, which gained unanimous acclaim and responds to cultural and historical events. Sometimes the writers create their works to orders of the Bigs (editors, politicians) and works dedicated to some dates.

The main aim of the writer is to be the spokesman of the foremost ideals of humanity, create language realistically accurate and saturated with the imagery thoughts and feelings of people and express the most progressive tendencies of the epoch and most advanced aspirations of the public circles, the cherished thoughts and hopes of people.

Many professions are associated with a particular stereo­type. The classic image of a writer, for instance, is of a slightly demented-looking person, locked in an attic, scribbling away furiously for days on end. Naturally, he has his favourite pen and notepaper, or a beat-up old typewriter, without which he could not produce a readable word.

Nowadays we know that such images bear little resem­blance to reality. But are they completely false? Some writers in many ways resemble the so-called stereotypical "writ­er". The "writer" is certainly not demented, and doesn't work in an attic. But he is rather neurotic about the tools of his trade.

Such a "writer" insists on writing with a certain type of pen in a certain type of notebook, the person is so superstitious that, if someone uses one of his pens by accident, she im­mediately throws it away.

Aswell as his "fetish" about writing materials, there is one other characteristic with the stereotypical "writer" — his work is the most important thing in his life. The writer may remain single for his life time having nether family nor friends.

But nowadays the writers hardly use pens but notebooks and try to have a full life as it may help to the promotion of his writings.

And now I'd like to talk about my favourite writer who was creating his literal masterpieces when all the works were under ideological regulation and hardly a person could oppose it. This author is Mikhail Bulgakov.

In 1920s he assured his reputation as a novelist by his significant accomplishments. His outstanding novels and plays such as 'The Mater and Margarita', 'Heart of a Dog', 'Turbiny's Days' and others were sensationalized among the best minds of society.

But as well as other talented writers of the Soviet epoch Bulgakov became a victim of the regime. By 1927 his career began to suffer from criticism that he was too anti-Soviet. By 1929 his career was ruined, and government censorship prevented publication of any of his work and staging of any of his plays. In some works he tried to adopt himself to the conformity of real life and proclaim priorities of the community, but people didn’t except those works.

Bulgakov was a patriot of the former Russian Empire and cursed the soviet regime, that's why he offered the resistance to the authorities. He was strong and brave enough (probably because of the usage of the drugs) to write the letter to Stalin and ask him for the allowance to perform his plays on the stage. For the general surprise he wasn’t tortured and didn’t disappear from a cultural horizon but managed to stage some of the plays that were forbidden. Unfortunately it didn’t last long, and new works were prohibited. Bulgakov became a forlorn writer who didn’t get support from the so-called 'brothers-in-arms'. Mikhail died from nephrosclerosis in the age of 48 and left a great number of works that are still loved all over the world despite the fact that once they were forbidden.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Russian: Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к) (10 February 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Nobel Prize-winning Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, and translator of Goethe and Shakespeare. In Russia, Pasternak is most celebrated as a poet. My Sister Life, written in 1917, is one of the most influential collections of poetry published in the Russian language in the 20th century. In the West he is best known for his epic novel Doctor Zhivago, a tragedy whose events span the last period of the Russian Empire and the early days of the Soviet Union. It was first translated and published in Italy in 1957. He helped give birth to the dissident movement with the publication of Doctor Zhivago.

Pasternak was named the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958.

Boris Pasternak first accepted the award, but was later caused by the authorities of his country to decline the prize. On 25 October, two days after hearing that he had won, Pasternak sent the following telegram to the Swedish Academy:

Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.

However, four days later came another telegram:

Considering the meaning this award has been given in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Please do not take offense at my voluntary rejection.

The Swedish Academy announced:

This refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award. There remains only for the Academy, however, to announce with regret that the presentation of the Prize cannot take place.

Pasternak had declined under intense pressure from Soviet authorities. Despite turning down the award, Soviet officials soured on Pasternak, and he was threatened with expulsion. In response, Pasternak wrote to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev,

"Leaving the motherland will equal death for me. I am tied to Russia by birth, by life and work."

In addition, the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, may also have spoken with Khrushchev about this, and Pasternak was not exiled.

Despite this, a famous Bill Mauldin cartoon at the time showed Pasternak and another prisoner in the GULAG, splitting trees in the snow. In the caption, Pasternak says, "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?" The cartoon won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1959.

A minor planet 3508 Pasternak, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina in 1980 is named after him.

Russian-American singer and songwriter Regina Spektor recited a verse from a 1912 poem by Pasternak in her song "Apres Moi" from her album Begin to Hope.

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