On The Writing Process
Essay 20
There is always some hesitation when faced with an empty page. The writer must not only battle the sheer immensity of their own confusion when forced to display themselves to the world in words but must also battle, capture, and retain the attention of their readers. In this way, they become more of a circus performer, a court jester, or a literary clown—vying for the eyes and affections of the crowd—than anything else.
The writer must first think of something, then find something honest to say about it, and lastly, agonize over the word order and effect they are trying to convey with their honesty.
Brevity and tidy representations of ideas are infinitely better than whatever verbosity comes out of a solitary thinker. Thoughts that do not strike at the heart are empty platitudes. What use is language if not to capture, in as few words as possible, a truth that even children know intuitively?
The poor writer thinks it their duty to labor endlessly for the sake of length, when in truth, the only thing that matters is how accurately they can convey their inner light in an engaging manner. Length is for the scribbler; where truth goes, they depart from it. The veracity of truth should be proportional to its length—that is to say, it should be very short. Why does man so often hide what he really thinks behind so many meaningless clauses? One should say to him, “Your consistency is admirable, but the results are paltry. You go about crafting this or that edifice while ignoring the foundation. What good is a marble column if you lack the mortar to surround it?”
Consider it the greatest sin to emulate this or that model of prose without first mastering your own diction. Diction is not merely the words chosen but the order of them. A single misplaced word could spoil the whole paragraph, which is why it becomes necessary for the writer to shorten what they say. The shorter it is, the more direct, the more honest, the less time spent addling over this or that phrase. The mind becomes weary when the writing doesn’t offer clarification or edification.
Profundity is only found when one expresses an old truth wrapped in a new garment. Who doesn’t love Bacon, Schopenhauer, or Johnson for that reason? Hazlitt is the most romantic and elated of all essayists, but he takes the picturesque nature of prose too far, I feel. He becomes too effusive after a long enough reading—too concerned with appearing pretty and sensational. While he adequately paints the picture of his mind, it’s easy to see he did so merely for the enjoyment of painting, rather than providing the reader with his honest thought. I suppose he cannot be too harshly criticized, however, for every writer represents their age in a way that is unbeknownst even to them.
The unconscious recognition of everything that is in vogue, the endless striving after this or that aesthetic ideal, the changing of opinions regarding this or that past work of genius—all this and more we perceive. And yet, we think ourselves beyond them, as if they are merely reflections of the masses’ unconscious stupidity, a thing which would never influence us. Oh, but this is where the solitary man is wrong. Given enough time, you will find yourself doing what you once swore against. That which falls out of popularity becomes the next mundane aesthetic, and the new one is only popular precisely because it is new. As a result, these trends can never be called great: for what is truly great becomes timeless for all the universal and noble characteristics it contains. Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Homer—what is in these men that makes them persist throughout time, longer than fashion trends or commonplace literature? They wrote what transcends the common; they found themselves producing truths that are as true today as they were when they composed their works.
Genius, no doubt, can have its rightful place in such creations, but it is not genius alone that made them immortal. Immortality is only found in honest reflection; what is grand in a maxim spoken by a truthful soul continues on further than the gossip that surrounds it. There are many witty quotations but few Decalogues; man agrees more with what men of the past say than what his contemporaries say—for truth today is denigrated as common, whereas with time, all things have the appearance of wisdom, even if they be as old as time itself. This is why a man can summarize his whole age, provide an honest philosophical framework by which to live, and contain within every sinew of his body a vigorous passion for life, and still be ignored and shunned by his contemporaries.
The endurance of a man of ideas must be great, far greater than anything he will have to endure in the passing of life. So long as he knows what his convictions are and continuously fights for them, his ideas may live on and serve as inspiration for those who see the obvious truths in them. You must be your own Erasmus, create your own Adagia, your own collection of sayings and wise remarks to be placed within the minds of every noble spirit hereafter. Your words are not merely for you or your contemporaries; they are for all who come after you. Leave behind a legacy that makes you appreciated in the minds of every noble soul; everyone who has turned through your pages with alacrity because they contain precisely what they themselves think, and which only stirs up in them a desire to think and create themselves.
It is often said that a common peasant boy has more good sense than the most educated and cultured of people because what they say is drawn from their own experience, rather than out of some book or novel which, while it does contain some true things, often doesn’t provide truth directly but attempts to beautify it with this or that horrid speculation. Not to say that the writer’s speculation is wrong, but that the reader’s is greater, truer: because it comes from them rather than from another.
Only your own thoughts have impact and truth: which is why Schopenhauer undertook all his writings as soon as he awoke; for the mind in such a state is under no pretension or obligation to some frightful sensation, which encourages the will. In the essays of Francis Bacon, one gets the impression that he composed them with ready apprehension, little forethought, and much wisdom. All thus said is true, but it should be remembered that he deliberately composed them in much haste for the sake of summarizing in a sentence whole books. Like Nietzsche long after him, he wrote aphorisms rather than actual essays. The original point of the essay was to be an attempt, a venture into what you yourself think; to leave behind an honest representation of your thoughts regarding the trivial and the profound. In his note to the reader, Montaigne says:
READER, thou hast here an honest book… Had my intention been to seek the world’s favour, I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties: I desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice: for it is myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read to the life, and any imperfections and my natural form, so far as public reverence hath permitted me. If I had lived among those nations, which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature’s primitive laws, I assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and quite naked. Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book: there’s no reason thou shouldst employ thy leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell.
And so, one need not write at length for the sake of appearing learned or profound—it needs only honesty. All writing which adheres to the principle of profuse wisdom and heavy brevity is well enough to read.
Most writers confuse the process of writing with writing itself. The process is the forethought; the writing is the afterthought. If our minds were like mirrors, accurately depicting whatever is placed in front of them, there would be no process, no forethought—there would simply be the act of writing itself. No editing would be necessary, and every scribble would resemble the beauty of nature rather than the vain appearance of it. This is a dream to be surely desired but, if ruminated upon with any honesty, to be understood as impossible. And so, the writer must not delay their genius or noble reflection, for when writing is undertaken closer to the moment of revelation, it often carries with it more elegance and grandeur.
Like all crafts, writing is no different—it requires the same amount of labor to become proficient at it. The length of a sentence should require a proportionate amount of time to its construction. Without inspiration, one must struggle along, hitting upon the right word; but the longer one endures their haphazard attempts, the quicker they find themselves writing in the long run. In writing, the longer one labors, the sooner their apprehension; words come to them with greater alacrity, as if their power of diction were proportional to the amount of time they spent thinking upon the idea.
I suppose that is the essence of the writing process: at first, confusion and struggle, followed by more firmness and strength, ending with fluidity and ready dictation. The only thing that should be remembered is this: writing without life is death pressed in ink upon the page. If you seek to write with greatness, it should be concise, honest, and nearly poetic, although not entirely like a poet. That is my writing process, at least.