“The Creative Impulse”

Each person has his own source of inspiration. In psychology, inspiration is the appearance of motivation for an action. Usually it is expressed in a special emotional upsurge, when a person feels an unexpected surge of strength, and his thoughts become clear and consistent. Some writers sit at the table for hours, or maybe for years, waiting for inspiration. Others need to perform some unusual action, for example, to divorce the husband... In one of the stories William Somerset Maugham told the story of one writer and described the creation of her first detective story. Let’s find out what happened there.

The story described the writer Mrs. Forester. She wrote on deep topics, her works were highly praised by critics. However, ordinary readers did not understand and did not buy her books. But it was not important for her, she said that she had never wanted to write for the masses. Mrs. Forrester even thought of going into Parliament, but she did not know which party to choose. The writer was absolutely confident in the correctness of everything that she was saying, writing and doing. Actually, she was not very educated and very poorly versed in what she wrote. Only after her husband and his mistress escape, Mrs. Forester started writing a successful detective story.

The narrator used irony to convey to the reader his own emotional and evaluative attitude to the heroin. He made fun of literally every feature of her character, appearance and behavior.

I like this story. I think it is very instructive. William Somerset Maugham made modern authors think about important things. Worthy great authors should write in a clear and accessible language and, most importantly, should write only about what they understand.