The Writer's Main Task

“The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.” – Thomas Mann

Born in Lubeck, Germany on this date in 1875, Mann was a journalist, novelist, short story writer, philanthropist and essayist who started writing in the mid-1890s while living in Munich.  

His creative writing career, which became wildly successful with his first novel Buddonbrooks – about a merchant family and reflective of his own childhood roots – was marked primarily by his short stories, which also were popular throughout his lifetime and continue to be studied in writing classes today.   

                                              Winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, Mann became one of the most outspoken critics of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis and ultimately fled to Czechoslovakia and then the United States.   One of the most prominent anti-Nazi spokespersons during World War II, he ultimately became a naturalized American citizen and lived in the U.S. until shortly before his death in Switzerland in 1955.

While he relished his role as a writer, he said he often struggled, particularly “finding the right words” to express the ideas he had formulated.  “A writer,” he said, “is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com