Writing is thinking.

  My
wife said to me around the time we first met, “Writing is thinking.”   That’s an excellent notion, I thought at the
time, though I didn’t write it down.   I
could argue, and I shall for the purpose of this discussion, that much of
writing begins with feelings.   These are
forms of thought without language.   They
are randomly firing neurons, unclarified emotions, mood swings, inchoate brain
scramble, that compel one to make sense of it all if you’re so inclined.

And
if you are, you may sit down and try to turn these inarticulate surges inside
the mind into words on the page.   You may
ask yourself, what am I thinking, presuming that those feelings are indeed embryonic
thoughts?     But if it goes well, you can begin to stumble
around trying to apply words to these impulses, leading to sentences, then paragraphs,
then pages and chapters, etc.  

With luck and effort, something akin to
discourse, or fiction, will emerge.   There
are theories of quantum mechanics that maintain that the properties of
sub-atomic particles only behave in an orderly, predictable way when
observed.  That the observer enforces a certain
type of logic and reason upon the physical world.   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm    Could it be that the act of observing ones
feelings brings order to otherwise incoherent urges, which then, upon the
application of language, reveal their inner nature?

Beats
me, but it’s nice to think so.  

Every
writer reports there are times when the writing seems to be writing itself,
that the person behind the keyboard is merely the delivery system, with no
agency over the outcome.   If you believe
that feelings are proto thoughts, then perhaps the act of assembling words into
sentences actually organizes the chaos into coherence.   Some believe this process of constructing
intelligible meaning out of the mental agitator inside our minds is what separates
us from animals, even smart ones.   (I’m
not so sure, having a terrier who knows the difference between   “Want to go for a ride?” and “Go get your toy!”)  

Another
mystery of composition is when a writer discovers something about their story
in the process of the writing.   Something
they never thought of suddenly appears on the page, and it makes sense, often
solving a hitch in the works.   My wife
once asked me why I was so feverishly writing the end of a book, and I told
her, “I want to know how this thing turns out.”

The
number of possible connections between brain cells is so staggeringly immense, it’s
not surprising that revelation can seemingly pop out of the blue.   It used to be called divine intervention,
back when divinity played a more active role in our understanding of the
universe.   

Today,
brain science would assert that it’s merely the interaction between the
subconscious and conscious mind that allows for this reordering of feelings and
impressions into serviceable language.   Not
a very romantic notion, I admit.   Divine
intervention, or the spark of spontaneous genius seems much more satisfying,
less clinical, more fun.   But I think the
likely result of our churning, surprising mental functions to be exciting enough.   To my mind, science is a lot more awe inspiring
than any mythological narrative could ever
be.

I’m
a fine woodworker, and much of the process involves beginning with an imagined
object.   From there, you try to render it
in two-dimensional space, with a drawing (I still use a pencil, architectural
scale ruler and graph paper).   It’s the first
proof-of-concept.   If you can’t draw it,
you can’t build it.   The next step is
usually a prototype – a physical, 3D rendering of the drawing.   As the process progresses, you move gradually
from the abstract to the concrete, something you can hold and measure in actual
space and time.   If the prototype works,
you’re good to go.   Next step is bringing
the actual thing to fruition.  

I believe that writing is exactly the same
process.   That’s why, to me, a house is a
novel.   Kitchen cabinets a book of short
stories.   A turned spindle a poem.  

By
the way, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle could throw a pretty big wrench in
the above assumptions, but that’ll have to wait for another essay.