A Reason For Writing
Jun. 3rd, 2018 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloOne of the reasons I write is to find out what I really think.
This afternoon for instance I wrote a longish screed about war poetry but didn't post it because something about it didn't feel quite right. I left it up on the computer and walked away and did something else- the crossword, I think- and when I came back to it and re-read it I could see that it was really very wrong. I tinkered about a bit and then wiped it because the wrongness was beyond tinkering.
If the form of a thing I've written is inelegant and badly proportioned- as this post was- I've come to realise it's almost because the thinking it embodies is inelegant and badly proportioned too. Not everything I'd written was bad- and maybe if I go away again and think some more I'll find my thoughts falling into a more elegant pattern. If they don't I'll know it's a subject on which I have nothing worthwhile to say.
This afternoon for instance I wrote a longish screed about war poetry but didn't post it because something about it didn't feel quite right. I left it up on the computer and walked away and did something else- the crossword, I think- and when I came back to it and re-read it I could see that it was really very wrong. I tinkered about a bit and then wiped it because the wrongness was beyond tinkering.
If the form of a thing I've written is inelegant and badly proportioned- as this post was- I've come to realise it's almost because the thinking it embodies is inelegant and badly proportioned too. Not everything I'd written was bad- and maybe if I go away again and think some more I'll find my thoughts falling into a more elegant pattern. If they don't I'll know it's a subject on which I have nothing worthwhile to say.
