On The Urge To Write
Essay 22
Consider it the greatest misfortune of a writer to find themselves unable to write, and yet being most desirous to do so. I cannot help my nature, as much as I wish I could; for, in the main, while I think when I write at length, I spin out my thoughts to their greatest possible effect and thereby increase their profundity and impact, I also feel it slackens the spirit and thus becomes more like a burden to think than to write without thinking.
If that made any sense at all, what I suppose to venture forthwith is that I can never seem to satisfy my desire to supply the world with my thoughts without wanting to encapsulate the whole world within every idea that appears before me.
If it is a thing to be praised, verbosity tethered with clearness, then I lack the strength to maintain verbosity and the intelligence to appear at all times clear. I often think to myself that the kind of drivel I pen now is precisely where my fame will lie in posterity, as it was for Schopenhauer with his Parerga und Paralipomena.
I count among my greatest influences in this new approach to my ideas and compositional methods: Schopenhauer (first and foremost among the rest), Francis Bacon (like Schopenhauer, the most concise and elegant in all English prose), Nietzsche (a recent rereading of him has caused me much delight and realization), Emerson (much has been acquired by me in my perusal of his journal entries), and Samuel Johnson (the first man whose prose I studied systematically).
I have, for some months now, been, I think to my detriment, obsessed with appearing erudite, as if erudition were the only thing necessary for a man to place his idea upon a page. I now consider it the height of folly. Men with literary ambitions, seeking high culture, spend their whole days absorbed in books, searching for every adage and principle of conduct developed by the wise for the sake of their own empowerment, but without fail, disregard their own outbursts of wisdom, saying it is merely the thought of a dilettante. They do a greater disservice to themselves than they realize with this brazen act of dismissal. To them, no thought of their own really matters unless it is in some way in agreement with an author they previously read.
What are we to think of such a sorry excuse for a man—a man of leisure who strives to give his ideas life, all the while contorting the contours of their natural representation? I said it's folly for a reason. What use does an idea have if it lacks honesty and is not stood behind with conviction, as if the fate of Earth depended on it?
Nothing perturbs the fool more than that which goes against his biases, and the same is true with the thoughts of an author who has yet to find his voice. In my own journey, my voice was found the moment I stopped treating as sacrosanct all the thoughts that came from men I admired. I had acquainted myself with the whole of intellectual history and could provide facts pertaining to the lives, opinions, philosophies, and personal habits of nearly any name given at the drop of a hat; but despite all this acquisition, I had not the slightest hint of insight into any of the facts I had accumulated. I was, and still am to an extent, nothing more than a glorified encyclopedia when it comes to what men of genius have thought and said. It is to them I owe my love for good prose, literature, truths contained within the ancients and moderns alike, criticism and comparisons of ideas, etc.
All this was made apparent to me while studying such things, but again, I still failed to capture what the essence of independence was. I was more concerned with following their models rather than crafting my own. It has been said often by all men who pursue a life of scholarship and independent thought that it takes decades of experience before one can truly rid themselves of every influence that molded them. Still green in my newfound independence, I find myself shifting back and forth between the worlds of individuality and subservience. This ambivalence, I fear, will take years of patient endurance and constant refinement if I am to gradually overcome it.
But of all this, what does it have to do with finding voice? Well, that's just it—voice is only found when one discovers how incomparable their own ideas are in comparison to those authors and models they had loved and emulated faithfully.
It is one thing for a man to be independent for his own sake, usually on account of his ignorance, thinking himself smarter than everyone else; but it is another thing to realize just how inferior you are at the start of your literary journey, having already encountered people like Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Austen, Hazlitt, etc., and still finding the courage necessary to develop your own ideas.
That is the essence of voice: recognizing all that has come before you in this great tradition of literature, reading and arguing with the ideas of various people, some of staggering genius, and deeming them all quite superfluous and even ridiculous when compared to what you yourself have thought on similar matters.
It takes courage to write what you think, and it requires an almost incessant madness to continue writing after having familiarized yourself with all that has come before you. When I read Goethe, I wonder why anyone even bothers to pick up their pen, and yet, millions still do, and I hope to be one among millions inspired to write what I think.
The literary man often staggers at the start of his journey, holding his pen with uncertainty most of the time; but the more he writes, he builds up enough confidence to withstand the obvious failings of his early compositions, which become the bedrock for his later, more developed ideas. It only takes one idea for a masterpiece to be formed, but, next to finding your voice, that is the hardest thing: hitting upon that single idea.
Often, the most difficult sentence is the first one, for, theoretically, you could write infinitely, so long as you end your clauses in such a way that requires more explication or leaves you the opportunity to explore related ideas, but none of that can be accomplished without that initial, foundational sentence. Take the present composition you read, for example. I started this out without the slightest clue where I would go; the only thing I knew was the first sentence I wanted to say, and even that was gotten after much reflection and hard contemplation. From there, I simply rode the wave that is the natural course of my ideas.
A good writer, assuming they have found their voice, is able to, without hesitation, write even under the most deprived of conditions. A functioning mind can materialize something out of almost nothing, so long as their perception is ready to make allusions and comparisons whenever necessary.
Often have I found amongst the greatest of writers an ability to write with brevity, but never shunning the elegance or necessity of good punctuation and consistency between ideas. Everything flows from some initial source, and that outpouring is where character and the niceties of phrase shine through. One is stopped in their reading either when a sentence speaks to something personally experienced or is related in a way completely at odds with how it is traditionally explicated.
The greatest demand on the writer is to be mindful of the reader's patience. Not every idea needs to be profound, but it should cause pause and amazement when initially read. One should not, as I was wont to do until very recently, write with the hope of finding something to say; rather, man should only begin a composition when he has something to say, usually acquired by accident (inspiration) or steady ruminations.
The moment he has his idea, his onus is to stick to it and never waver from it if he can help it. He need not necessarily write long either. Schopenhauer, Bacon, and Dr. Johnson are enjoyable precisely for that reason. Hazlitt, Montaigne, and Macaulay are enjoyable for the consistency in their elegant prolixity (never before have men expounded so much—sometimes following their ideas rather than the title—in so engaging a manner). And Cicero, Seneca, and Erasmus are beautiful in their diction and profundity.
There are many ways to find success as a writer. You need not have a niche or a preferred topic. So long as you make yourself felt in each word and have about you a sense of what the length should be, you should always prosper when making your ideas known to the world. I only stress brevity and consistency of ideas above all else. It may also be of benefit to find ways of rephrasing something that seems prosaic or lifeless; it doesn't have to have meter necessarily, but it should approach poetry if possible. Whatever keeps the idea alive and in the mind of the reader is good.
Remember that the nature of ideas is that they are stubborn and lazy, and rarely do they come to you with fluidity at all times. One must be able to think before they speak, and so too must a writer think before they write. All scribbles should share the soul of their author and should allow the ideas to appear as they come.
But I think I have said enough, for if I were to attempt an extraction of more gold from a nearly empty mine, the whole foundation may collapse.