You should start... a splendid conversation
Continuing a slow-re-read of Robert Richardson's inspiring "First We Read..."
Emerson's high-wire writing advice:
"You should start… with no skeleton or plan. The natural one will grow as you work. Knock away all scaffolding. Neither have exordium or peroration. What is it you are writing for anyway? Because you have something new to say?”
I think he’s right, an organic and emergent plan is more vital than the rattling bones of a dead premeditated skeleton.
And it’s a good and open question to revisit all along the way, why write at all?
But then he says “it is the test of the universities and I am glad you have made it yours."
But I don't think the universities or most academic writers are good models or the best target audience. They don't generally encourage throwing your whole body into the work or saying something truly new, advice the Sage also offers.
Good novels do accomplish that whole-body/whole-person involvement, as reflected in believable dialogues that ring true to real life.
Montaigne, one of Emerson’s heroes, conversed with himself mostly. But in the process he also accessed multiple points of view, pluralizing, connecting, and (when possible) harmonizing varieties of his own experience. Such writing is natural and lively, not forced or pedantic. Fun to read. A challenge to write. Worth essaying, as the great tower essayist and alleged “first modern man” said.
…it is Montaigne's writing as much as his knowing that interests Emerson. "The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences. I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the language of conversation transferred to a book. Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive." — First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process by Robert D. Richardson
"More practical hints" from Richardson/Emerson:
...he was sure that process mattered more than product, that the act of writing was more important than the written and finished piece.
[What's best] is not that which he knows, but that which hovers in gleams... this dancing chorus of thoughts and hopes is the chorus of his future, is his possibility.
..."whatever abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must finally perform it." Samuel Johnson
When he had nothing to say, he wrote about having nothing to say.
It's not the setback that matters, its what happens next.
...every morrow is a new day... we should be willing to die when our time came, having had our swing and our gratification.
Emerson casts these concerns as practical matters for the working writer... talismans for the pragmatist who evaluates things by their fruits, not their roots... "I value men as they can complete their creation."
But Waldo, you said "process matters more than product." Right?
Or is that just a foolish consistency?
Neither Emerson or his role-model Carlyle were consistently conversational in their essays, unless your notion of conversation is a lot more aphoristic and symbolic than mine. Not even most fictional dialogue is. But it's a good target to aim at, and (as Waldo’s interlocutor Henry said) in the end we reach only that.
Richard Ford says he listens to every sentence aloud before publishing. That's a good approach. If it doesn't sound good, don't write it. (But if it didn't sound good in original speech, write it better.)
"…his paragraphs are all a sort of splendid conversation." Emerson's long correspondence with Carlyle was one such conversation, and Emerson set its value high. 'Strict conversation with a friend is the magazine out of which all good writing is drawn.' "— First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process by Robert D. Richardson
Not all. But plenty enough.
(Slow re-read to be continued…)