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“Camus addressed his views on writing most directly in a 1943 essay about the novel, included in his altogether indispensable Lyrical and Critical Essays (public library).
He reflects:
One must be two persons when one writes… The great problem is to translate what one feels into what one wants others to feel. We call a writer bad when he expresses himself in reference to an inner context the reader cannot know. The mediocre writer is thus led to say anything he pleases.
In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo in his advice on writing, insisting that “beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance,” Camus observes that all creative endeavor demands of us “a certain constancy of soul, and a human and literary knowledge of sacrifice.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/08/22/albert-camus-writing/
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