Processes of creative writing137
of not having said what we intended of not having communicated what you felt was your version of a truth. However, writing gives you time for rehearsal,
and time to get your words as right as possible. Clarity is crucial it is a desirable quality in writing.
As Strunk and White declare, Although there is no substitute
for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one (
2000
: 79). Clarity is of the first importance. When we use words, we have to use the right words and the right words in the best order. When we examine and fossick the world for material for our writing, we must be precise about what we really see, hear, touch, smell and taste. The garden of language is the same so much language claims our attention and thought that we must
be precise in what we choose, in where we place it and in the overall and particular correspondences of those placings.
Our perceptions and apprehensions are, of course,
partial and particular,
but we can train ourselves to perceive more imaginatively and empathically through practice. Knowing that the world is wider than our thought leaves people with a choice either to find out more about that world or to find the worlds inside you. Both are positive choices, since they are active. An easier life is available through a wilful ignorance of the self and the world around you.
This option is not available to us as writers.
A writer will want to balance these choices but pursue them both simultaneously. There are various ways to get out of oneself and into the world.
Experience plays apart, and our notebooks allow us to arrest the motion of experience
and record it for our use, but engagement with knowledge plays apart also. Forms of knowledge carry their cargoes through language. We can borrow these languages, we can burrow into these forms of knowledge, but it is our duty to do so honestly
and learn their precision and, with that, their power.
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