Joy of Living Creatively

Sartre and Inauthenticity

07.06.2023 - By Dr. Eric MaiselPlay

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Today’s episode is part of a series called “Lessons from Paris.” In this series I’ve chosen essays from my book A Writer’s Paris that I’m betting will help you deepen your connection to your creative life and motivate you to create every day. Today’s show, the third in the series, is called “Sartre and Inauthenticity.”

The episode begins this way:

“We writers lie incessantly. That we are bound to lie, however, is no justification for choosing to write insincerely. If we ourselves know that the point we are making is weak, it rests squarely on our shoulders to strengthen that point or abandon it entirely. If we throw in a gratuitous scene, tossed in to make fun of this or to rail aimlessly at that, it is up to us to edit that scene out when we revise. If we are writing in jargon so as to avoid saying what we mean or to disguise the fact that we haven’t much to say, our own voice should shout ‘No! Don’t do that!’ There is necessary lying; and there is old-fashioned, everyday lying.”

Tune in to hear more!

More episodes from Joy of Living Creatively