[HN Gopher] Writing as Transformation
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Writing as Transformation
Author : lermontov
Score : 97 points
Date : 2025-01-05 06:15 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| myst wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250106203714/https://www.newyo...
| Kerrick wrote:
| > More and more, the sentences I had in my head were like the
| sentences I loved in books: they began in one place and ended
| somewhere you hadn't imagined them going, though, at each turn,
| idea seemed to follow idea perfectly naturally. The surprise at
| the end, as the thought completed itself, seemed wildly exciting:
| the whole sentence needed to be reexperienced in this light;
| waves of unexpected revelations and insights resulted.
|
| Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of _Several Short Sentences About
| Writing_ , calls these "volunteer sentences." You don't follow
| them, you tame them. Take control of your writing.
| lordleft wrote:
| This is a common experience for writers, the sense of sentences
| appearing or almost completing themselves...it just occurred to
| me that reminds me of something that is asserted by Julian
| Jaynes in his controversial "The Origin of Consciousness in the
| Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." He claims that prior to the
| Bronze Age, human beings did not recognize their thoughts as
| belonging or originating with themselves; instead, they
| perceived thoughts as emanating externally, from Gods. I have
| no idea if there are merits to Jaynes theory, but it's fun to
| consider if the writer's inner voice, this sense of
| automaticity while writing, might recruit the same mechanisms
| of which Jaynes is speaking.
| aradox66 wrote:
| Where else could language really come from besides appearing
| more or less spontaneously in the mind? All thought is like
| this.
|
| Is there a level of consciousness prior to language that
| willfully assembles the next word out of more subtle mind
| stuff? There would be an infinite regress here.
| siavosh wrote:
| I agree. In different traditions, it's this realization
| that there is no separate assembler of thoughts/words (to
| your point, the problem of who is the assembler of the
| assembler?) that is a key insight.
| mocha_nate wrote:
| Exactly. In order to say a thought *wasn't spontaneous*
| would mean that you thought something BEFORE you thought
| it.
| siavosh wrote:
| You could even go further -- all actions are
| spontaneous...life is spontaneous.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Love it. I also really enjoyed the book "First You Write a
| Sentence" by Joe Moran
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/607260/first-you-wr...
| wonger_ wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. That was my favorite piece of reading in
| a while.
| listenfaster wrote:
| " There remains a strange relation to the poems I have already
| written. Though they were written to create or affirm my
| existence, they did not, once they were finished, continue to do
| so. What they suggested, when I read them afterward, was that I
| had once existed and had thoughts; something that had been alive
| and specific was now silent or vanished. So the poems became a
| kind of chastisement, taunting reminders of what was not."
|
| Looking back on previous writing can also be a positive
| reinforcement, though yeah sometimes you feel taunted, or that
| you could've done better. And small though it may feel, writing
| is action. You didn't just let thing bounce around in your head,
| you wrote it out - you did something. My hot take on this this
| morning - I liked this read, thanks for posting.
| biscuits1 wrote:
| There is always an origin to writing something (or aptly, a
| citation.)
|
| "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I
| have eaten; even so, they have made me."
|
| - Ralph Waldo Emerson
| richrichie wrote:
| Thank God, i have company. I used to think I had early onset
| dementia.
| iwsk wrote:
| I get it but really, we eat food to retain its nutrients while
| we read books to retain knowledge(sometimes).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| An extreme version is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_writing
| sebmellen wrote:
| You can get some pretty far-out places doing this on an
| electronic typewriter, in the dark, with the right state of
| mind.
|
| Example: https://bedaring.org/post/quarantined-thoughts/the-
| pursuit-o....
| Rzor wrote:
| Thank you very much for posting this.
| siavosh wrote:
| In meditation, instead of the breath you can use your thoughts as
| an object to observe dispassionately. I believe we all have what
| this author is describing, basically language based thought that
| we have no seeming conscious control over (I would argue all of
| our thoughts). We can just sit back and watch the show. My sense
| is that some people see this more readily than others and are
| more sensitive to it, probably good correlation with different
| types of artists. For me personally, it took a while to see this
| for the first time, but it was a revelation and completely
| changes your perspective on what/who you think you are.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| In a lucid dream you know you are dreaming. Recently I
| discovered that just because I am aware that I am in a dream
| and my actions do not not have real consequences, the feelings
| connected to the actions in my dream remain real. In my dreams,
| and awake.
|
| Weird.
| drewchew wrote:
| Coming across stuff like this is why I value the hacker news
| community.
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| Writing is an interesting process, it seems different for
| everyone. There are lots of tools and techniques so that is not a
| surprise. For me sometimes it's putting together LEGOs, other
| times it's crafting a puzzle or panning for gold. And a rare few
| times its felt like hooking into the great creative currents of
| the universe to bring something to fruition.
| mocha_nate wrote:
| Well said
| m_sahaf wrote:
| I cannot find the source, but I saved this quote by Douglas
| Hofstadter about the process of writing, rewriting, and revising:
|
| "It is the intensity of this process of global tightening and
| smoothing of a huge structure that was once implicit in one's
| mind but is now external and has its own unanticipated shape,
| life, and momentum, it is the power of this process of converting
| a set of once-intangible intuitions into a very tangible network
| of interconnected crystals, that I had forgotten."
| memhole wrote:
| Both art and article are good. I can definitely relate. I feel
| like most of my writing actually happens well before I sit down
| to write anything. It's thoughts and notes, then something comes
| out. The weirdly frustrating thing is when it doesn't align with
| my notes at all, but somehow it's better. Or at least I think
| it's better. Then it's a matter of not editing too much. Or at
| all sometimes. I've definitely written and posted things that
| when from brain to web.
| plg wrote:
| yes!
|
| typing is not writing
|
| for me at least 90% of the "writing" happens away from a
| keyboard
|
| mainly in my head (on walks, in the shower, when I least expect
| it)
|
| then on paper & pencil, writing words, phrases, drawing lines,
| rinse, repeat
|
| my goal is to finish the conceptual thinking to a degree that
| when I sit down in front of a keyboard, it's mainly
| "downloading" from my brain
|
| If I try to do the conceptual work at a keyboard it's torture
| hollerith wrote:
| Interesting. When I'm on a walk or in the shower, I try to
| avoid thinking about anything complicated, preferring to wait
| till I'm in front of a keyboard.
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