Writing as a Discipline
October 27th, 2006
I have always felt that I do my best thinking while I am writing. First comes the initial insight (and perhaps this is the best part of the thought, in one sense, but read on). Then, when it comes time to write that insight down, I discover that the insight is something more like an outsight, in the sense that when I try to frame it in words, I realize that in order to do so, something about my previous set of assumptions, my previous world, has to change. I have to go outside/beyond where I am when I start the writing process. And suddenly I find myself off and running, in an unexpected direction, in fact, a direction that I didn’t even know existed.
Does anyone else experience it like this?
Entry Filed under: jacks corner, Blog
7 Comments Add your own
1. davidf | October 28th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Hi Jack,
Actually, I’ve always felt I do my best composing in my head, an activity I do best over time, not that I’m that great at it. :-) When I do this, it allows my heartfelt intent to call forth aspects from depths that discursive thinking usually skims over. When an insight seems to ‘dawn’ on me, it is usually associated with an inquiry I’ve been considering. In that dawning there is great clarity and openness. If I decide to write it down, I must contextualize it, and that begins the series of choices and decisions that narrow and particularize how to approach what I want to say, as well as the manner in which I think will best express the meaning of that insight. The great challenge in particularizing any open insight is to try and maintain as much of the openness and clarity of its original dawning.
Regards,
David
2. Joel Agee | October 28th, 2006 at 10:44 am
I find both Jack’s and David’s descriptions apply to my experience. The original insight often comes as a flash of imagining, a sense of possibility, that is accompanied by great clarity and openness. But the thought is still inchoate, incomplete, and germinal. I sense, with some excitement, that there’s something more that will be revealed on closer examination. It is this anticipation that prompts and fuels the experiment of writing. Then, in the process of formulation, new vistas and unexpected possibilities reveal themselves. I often have the sense that I don’t know what I think until I write it,
Joel
3. jackp | October 28th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
And i agree with both of you. The original flash is a mystery. And letting it evolve over time, in the belly, as it were, goes on whether we are aware of it or not. But Joel’s description echoes mine.
I’m delighted people read this area; it may encourage me to write more.
4. ken mckeon | March 21st, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Poems seem to start like that, an impulse laid down in words…and then what? Eventually more words are the “what, but that might take a whole lot of drafts, winds beating through an open window. Catch one and let it speak, sail if you will, and the keyboard is found in some quartet playing in some club/ somewhere, but one is home and playing, and it seems right,the chords close it and the heart opens in some minor key way.
5. Vassilios | July 10th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Nice…
6. Linda Copenhagen | September 7th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
My sense is a little different and the same. Initial insight is kind of feeling in the space of my head, open space. how it has feeling I don’t know but that is what it is like. Then when that space gives over its sense ( not logic but sense of feeling like), poetry does seem the way to convey without getting limited by linear construct. As I reflect, the open feeling where the communication arises is like from very open space in the ears. Don’t know why the ears. But with open ears, the throat is encouraged. Works, or words, come to the paper like steady and calm joy. Rather than limitation, the search for words feels more open as landing on the right one or combination is like seeing an old friend again. It draws one on.
Linda
7. jackp | September 19th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Hi Linda,
I don’t look so much to the felt sense, although there are times when that comes to my attention, and then there definitely a kind of spaciousness, that seems global.
I think the joyful quality is important. Something creative is happening, and you get to go along for the ride.
I think when this happens, writing/thinking become meditative. I wonder if it would be possible to do more with this as a specific practice.
I suppose people sometimes try an approach like this for creative writing. And in the sense I mean, all writing is creative. But I specifically do not mean ‘creative writing’ as the term is usually used.
Jack
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