I Don't Know Together With Thence Good What 1 Intend Until 1 Run Into What 1 Say

One model of the procedure of writing is that y'all simply direct keep what's inward our caput together with 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/ H5N1 stately pleasance dome decree ..."). In Coleridge's telling, he was reading a mass that mentioned Kubla Khan together with dropped off to slumber (probably nether the influence of opium) together with woke upwardly amongst the poesy form fully formed inward his mind. He started writing it down, frantically, until he was interrupted past times a visitor together with the balance of the poesy form vanished from his mind.

I've known writers who direct keep the essay almost fully formed inward their mind,  together with it simply pours out on to the page. It's happened for me a few times. But most writing for me, together with I suspect for others, starts from a house of less clarity. There's an idea, to last sure, together with some back upwardly for the idea. But equally y'all attempt to pose the ideas into concrete words, y'all boot the bucket aware of a lack of precision inward what y'all are saying, of a failure to capture what y'all actually hateful to say, of holes together with inconsistencies inward 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) close transcribing thoughts, but instead is intertwined amongst a procedure of developing insights that are to a greater extent than accurate together with complete.

The swell author Flannery O'Connor 1 time wrote inward a Federal Reserve annotation to her agent: "I direct keep to write to uncovering what I am doing. Like the erstwhile lady, I don't know thence good what I mean value until I come across what I say; together with thence I direct keep to say it over again."

(The missive of the alphabet was written to her literary agent on Jan 21,  21, 1948, piece she was inward 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 erstwhile lady." Who is "the erstwhile lady?"

Her reference seems to merchandise dorsum to a comment from E.M. Forster inward 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 erstwhile lady inward the anecdote who has defendant her nieces of beingness illogical. For some fourth dimension she could non last brought to empathize what logic was, together with when she grasped its truthful nature she was non thence much angry equally contemptuous. “Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!” she exclaimed. “How tin I enjoin y'all what I mean value till I come across what I say?” Her nieces, educated immature women, sentiment that she was passée; she was actually to a greater extent than up-to appointment than they were.” 

Although the phrasing of this sentiment past times Gide, Forster, together with O'Connor is peculiarly pithy, the sentiment that y'all postulate to write inward social club to detect out what y'all actually mean value has come upwardly up before. For example, there's a throwaway work inward the 1852 new past times William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond: "[T]here are a grand thoughts lying inside a human being that he does non know till he takes upwardly 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 some 1579-1580.

"I listen some making excuses for non beingness able to limited themselves, together with pretending to direct keep their heads total of many fine things, but to last unable to convey them out for lack of eloquence. That is all bluff. Do y'all know what I mean value these things are? They are shadows that come upwardly to them of some shapeless conceptions, which they cannot untangle together with clear upwardly within, together with consequently cannot fix forth without: they create non empathize themselves yet. And simply sentinel them stammer on the signal of giving birth; y'all volition conclude that they are laboring non for delivery, but for conception, together with that they are alone 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).