I’ve read very many books on writing.
Most of them are crap.
But there’s been a few terrific books on writing that have helped me arrange my mind in such a way that I can now accomplish the things I before was only able to imagine.
Some of those books are:
‘The art of thinking’ by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero
‘On writing well’ by William Zinsser
‘100 ways to improve your writing’ by Gary Provost
‘A manual for writers of research papers, theses and dissertations’ by Kate L Turabian
And, ‘Aspects of the novel’ by E.M Forster
Most of these books are about writing but they are still good to read even for people that don’t want to be writers. Because most people don’t seem to realize what writing is.
What it does to our minds.
I don’t think we as people spend enough time trying to be conscious about what we are unconscious of.
We don’t realize how much we operate from the abstract.
Let’s say I’m extremely attracted to a man. I will be very drawn to him by the attraction. But attraction is an abstract solution to an abstract problem.
There are many, many, many things that will make me feel attraction.
A particular physical trait, a smell, a tone of voice, a level of charisma, a perfectly timed kindness, the exact help I need at the exact right time, noticing a high status or other people’s admiration.
The attraction is a result, but I’m not chasing the cause of the attraction, I’m chasing the attraction.
This is how we operate. In the abstract. We chase the things that hover around the things that we want. Or we avoid the things that hover around what we fear.
We operate in our feelings and our feelings are abstract information.
My dad designed and remodeled houses. He was very talented at what he did so he had a lot of very wealthy clients that adored him.
One of those clients was in publishing and she adored my dad so that she offered to read his daughter’s, my, writing.
I was twelve or thirteen at the time and I was fully convinced that I was brilliant. So I wasn’t the least bit nervous about showing her my writing.
I fully expected her to love it and proclaim my brilliance.
I’m sure it’s obvious that’s not what happened.
She returned my writing to me and I knew exactly what she thought of it without her saying a word.
But she did say a word. Words that were kinder than her thoughts but still pretty direct.
She said ‘sorry but your writing is unintelligible.’
Unintelligible.
That’s a word I’ve heard a lot.
I didn’t quite have a concept back then for what that word really meant in reference to my writing.
But slowly over the course of a couple decades I’ve pieced it together.
What it meant was that I had two worlds that didn’t quite interact with each other which made my writing disjointed and chaotic.
But the real secret to it is that my writing was chaotic because my thinking was chaotic.
I’ve spent most of my years and efforts into what is called ‘free writing’.
Free writing is writing as much as possible with as little thinking as possible without stopping for a period of time.
So mistypes are not fixed, there’s no stopping to edit or consider or make sense of. You just keep writing.
Sometimes I’d set my free writing to a time limit and sometimes I’d set my free writing to a word count.
So an hour or two hours. Or three thousand words or six thousand words.
What comes from free writing is mostly a blob of chaotic nonsense.
But what also comes from free writing is the basic building blocks of what writing is.
For example if I look at a sunset I have a lot of unconscious reactions to that sunset.
There might be some commentary in my mind such as ‘it’s pretty’ or ‘it’s getting dark’ but most of my reactions will be feelings and associations. They could be association to something in the past or associations to something I want in the future.
But it is all very abstract. And it’s jumbled and messy. Lots of things get filtered out and lots of things get pulled into focus.
So if I free write about the sunset I’m simply doing the best I can to record the most immediate reactions in whatever sequence I can get.
The fact that it’s getting dark might pull my focus more than the beauty of the sunset. That might take me down a waterfall of a more anxious line of thinking which could take me to the future.
In free writing that’s what you are doing, you’re just going with the flow from waterfall to waterfall and recording the thoughts.
What does one do with a big blob of the half processed unconsciousness that is free writing?
The same thing one does with an emotion. Sort of just hovers around it without being able to see the details.
When you can’t see the details in writing you can’t edit it.
When you can’t see the details in life you can’t act with any independence of feeling.
The act of writing helps the brain put everything into order. It’s helps translate so that the details that matter can be found.
I’ll have to write more on this is a separate post I’m out time.
Jess lanai 
10 responses to “Aspects of writing”
I like to think that there is an entertainment/story telling element that is very important to writing as well. Even if a writer is good at setting a scene and using descriptive metaphors and adjectives, if for example the work is fiction and the plot is dry and the characters are stale and I have little to reason to care about them I will not read the book. If the writer can not tell a good story does that still mean that they are a good writer, personally I would say no but that is just my opinion.
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I think that’s the hard part. Because I genuinely think anyone and everyone could learn how to write but not everyone will be able to write a story anyone wants to read. Most writers I think just have to write a lot and probably about ten percent of their stories will grab any interest. Or maybe if they just happen to be really talented with stories they’ll get a higher percentage. But I think for most writers it’s a numbers game and just writing a lot and putting out a lot and every once in a while something will click.
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I write a lot for work but my writing is based on laws of nature, physics, math, and what have you; and that writing is intended to either convince the reader that I am right (or wrong, sometimes) or to prescribe actions. I imagine writing fiction is somewhat similar but it is based on the human psyche: empathy, desires, fascination, and/or a thousand other feelings and emotions. But effective writing is the art of organizing the writer’s thoughts and ideas and make a presentation that appeals to the reader’s sense of the laws at play, physical or mental/emotional. OK, I think I’ve reached the limit of my writing ability here; I’ll stop my rambling.
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You’re on of those smart people then that was good at the school. 😁 to me fiction isn’t really about convincing or being right or wrong. I’ve always thought of it as a way to communicate a darker or less acceptable part and have it be more easily understood by the general public as well as by ourselves. It’s hard to explain what I mean I guess I’ll have to think on it, but your writing was very welcome. Please ramble more
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I admit I was pretty good at school but in the real world, not so much, hahaha. I think I was/am still trapped in the idea that the writer is the creator of the universe in the piece but if the writer has an idea to communicate with the readers, then she already has a general map of how things can end up; the rest, then, is a matter of how the story is presented. Is that right?
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I was bad in school and in the real world. Now I’m a good at the real world but it took me a minute. And no, maybe some writers feel that way that they create the universe, I definitely do not have any control over it. There’s some kind of general truth to things even fiction. Like, I can’t just make up whatever I feel like making up, it has to have something real behind it. It has to be an interpretation or a perspective of something real. Otherwise it’s just random nonsense.
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I’ve been thinking about your thoughts on writing, especially as it pertains to “the chaos demon”.
I suffer from a similar writing dynamic possibly as a result of my brain working too fast at times which makes it difficult to stay focused. Nowadays, they call it Attention Deficit, but I’ve just always considered it as me being a bit scatter brained.
After reading some of your posts, it really made the think about something . I noticed you mentioned loosing some of your writing due to copy and paste etc. Have you considered old fashioned paper and pen? Maybe it’s a stylistic thing or maybe it’s a generational thing (I’m a 57 year old male btw). From my experience, there’s a structural difference in how information is obtained and conveyed. For example, my generation used a road Atlas for directions and today it’s a GPS. When I had to do research, I used an encyclopedia and now it’s done via internet search. And, when I wanted to learn how to fix, maintain, or assemble something I read the written directions whereas today ….it’s an online video. Not to mention reading a newspaper and doing the crossword puzzle. While neither one is right for everyone, it’s hard to argue that today’s resources aren’t way better. But, what’s often overlooked is the physical connection the brain makes in regard to muscle memory. I’ve found that physically writing something down utilizes a part of the brain associated with spatial relation and mechanical motor skills allowing the other part of my brain to relax thus retaining information better. Plus, forming letters is a slower process and forces my brain to slow down.
The book you read on forming “loose little ideas….and continuously going back to them” is spot on! I used to write a monthly article for my work. I kept a notebook with various thoughts, ideas, and interesting statistics. Much the way you mention. It might be something obscure and irrelevant at the time, but when I had an actual topic I was writing about, I would often find a great spot for it to fit in nicely as though I’d planned it all along. Of course my “linear” first draft was always done with a pencil on paper, not typed. And your idea of making an index would’ve potential very helpful. Wish I’d thought of that. Bottom line is the reader doesn’t see the process, only the final product. But I completely agree that writing isn’t linear, unless of course you’re making a How to Manual 🙂
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This was very interesting to read because I’ve wondered about a lot of it, especially the use of an atlas because I’ve always been very terrible at directions and I do wonder if the use of GPS has made it worse.
The same is true with putting things together, I I just recently stopped watching the videos and started only reading the instructions and it has made a difference. It makes a difference with cooking as well. If I mix watching a video with reading step by step instructions everything turns out better. And I have a better understanding of how to tweak recipes too.
You’re spot on with the using pen and paper. I’ve done it off and on over the years. But the use of pen and paper was very sporadic.
Now I have a pretty precise system for how I use notebooks. I get nice notebooks for one that are very individual. So I can name the notebook. Then I number all the pages, I write down the date every time I write, and I’ll use it outline ideas. Then I saw this trick researchers use where they ask themselves questions as to why they are studying a specific thing. They write all those questions down and then answer them.
It makes it incredibly easy to return to a study when you can read exactly what you were thinking and what your motives were.
In terms of being a scatter brain, I think my issue has always been overwhelm.
Everyone tells me I have ADHD. I don’t buy the whole ADHD thing. I don’t know. I’m just very skeptical of it. Not that it doesn’t exist but the way it is treated these days doesn’t seem to be helping people.
I’ve drastically improved my tendencies towards chaos. And I think a lot of it has to do with what you were saying, just how the world is nowadays. The GPS. The YouTube videos. All that kind of stuff.
Because it is very simple things that have drastically improved just everything.
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I agree. I’m sure HDHD exists, but I also think we’re over diagnosed and over medicated as a society. Mediation can prohibit someone from coming to terms with their specific problem and rely too heavily on medication.
I think you and I’ve got it correct. I’ll still call it scatter brain and you call still it overwhelm.
I think I finally figured out how to posture without it saying I’m “Anonymous “. Old dog….new tricks
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I’m not convinced it’s much more than a personality tendency that doesn’t do very well in the modern world, but that’s just my theory I’m not a psychologist. I agree on the medication thing. That it’s over used. I’ve never tried medication of any kind it’s always creeped me out, so I couldn’t say anything from experience. Maybe I’ll do an ADHD post just to rant my opinions. But yes, scatter brain and overwhelm either way i think we’ve both improved massively
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