I Don't Know In Addition To Then Good What One Intend Until One Run Across What One Say

One model of the procedure of writing is that you lot merely create got what's inwards our caput as well as pose into written words. The procedure is how Samuel Taylor Coleridge described the writing of his famous poesy form "Kubla Khan" ("In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 stately pleasance dome decree ..."). In Coleridge's telling, he was reading a majority that mentioned Kubla Khan as well as dropped off to slumber (probably nether the influence of opium) as well as woke upward amongst the poesy form fully formed inwards his mind. He started writing it down, frantically, until he was interrupted past times a visitor as well as the residual of the poesy form vanished from his mind.

I've known writers who create got the essay almost fully formed inwards their mind,  as well as it merely pours out on to the page. It's happened for me a few times. But most writing for me, as well as I suspect for others, starts from a house of less clarity. There's an idea, to live on sure, as well as some back upward for the idea. But equally you lot crusade to pose the ideas into concrete words, you lot boot the bucket aware of a lack of precision inwards what you lot are saying, of a failure to capture what you lot actually hateful to say, of holes as well as inconsistencies inwards the argument, of places where the declaration is non persuasive or connected or fluent. I sometimes detect this difficult to convey to students: Writing isn't (usually) virtually transcribing thoughts, but instead is intertwined amongst a procedure of developing insights that are to a greater extent than accurate as well as complete.

The groovy author Flannery O'Connor i time wrote inwards a banking concern notation to her agent: "I create got to write to uncovering what I am doing. Like the onetime lady, I don't know therefore good what I mean value until I encounter what I say; as well as therefore I create got to say it over again."

(The missive of the alphabet was written to her literary agent on Jan 21,  21, 1948, spell she was inwards the procedure of writing Wise Blood. It's reprinted on p. five in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor.)

But O'Connor's comment raises an obvious question. She wrote "like the onetime lady." Who is "the onetime lady?"

Her reference seems to merchandise dorsum to a comment from E.M. Forster inwards his 1927 book  "Aspects of the Novel," (1927). Forster is discussing a 1925 new past times Andre Gide called  Les Faux-monnayeurs, or The Counterfeiters. Here's the passage from p. 151 of Forster's book.

“Another distinguished critic has agreed amongst Gide – that onetime lady inwards the anecdote who has defendant her nieces of beingness illogical. For some fourth dimension she could non live on brought to empathize what logic was, as well as when she grasped its truthful nature she was non therefore much angry equally contemptuous. “Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!” she exclaimed. “How tin sack I enjoin you lot what I mean value till I encounter what I say?” Her nieces, educated immature women, persuasion that she was passée; she was actually to a greater extent than up-to appointment than they were.” 

Although the phrasing of this persuasion past times Gide, Forster, as well as O'Connor is specially pithy, the persuasion that you lot involve to write inwards guild to detect out what you lot actually mean value has come upward up before. For example, there's a throwaway describe of piece of occupation inwards the 1852 new past times William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond: "[T]here are a K thoughts lying inside a homo that he does non know till he takes upward the pen to write ..."

Other than the Gide/Forster/O'Connor version of this insight, my favorite version is from the Montaigne's essay "On the Education of Children," written approximately 1579-1580.

"I listen some making excuses for non beingness able to limited themselves, as well as pretending to create got their heads total of many fine things, but to live on unable to choose them out for lack of eloquence. That is all bluff. Do you lot know what I mean value these things are? They are shadows that come upward to them of some shapeless conceptions, which they cannot untangle as well as clear upward within, as well as consequently cannot prepare forth without: they produce non empathize themselves yet. And merely spotter them stammer on the signal of giving birth; you lot volition conclude that they are laboring non for delivery, but for conception, as well as that they are solely trying to lick into shape this unfinished matter."

(The translation of the quotation is from "The Complete Works of Montaigne: Essays, Journal, Letters," equally translated past times Donald M. Frame, Hamish Hamilton; London, p. 125).
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