On Writing

“It’s funny, I teach writing, and before I taught I never would have guessed the thing I say most often is: ‘Please stop thinking.’ But people really write better without thinking, by which I mean without self-consciousness. I’m not calculating about what I write, which means I have very little control over it. It’s not that I decide what to write and carry it out. It’s more that I grope my way towards something — not even knowing what it is until I’ve arrived. I’ve gotten better over the years at accepting this. Of course, the intellect wants to kick in — and, in the later drafts, it should. But in the early stages of a book, I deal with potential self-consciousness by literally hushing the critical voices in my head. The voices that tell you: ‘Oh, those aren’t the words you want,’ or ‘you shouldn’t be working on this part now,’ or ‘why not use the present tense?’ — on and on. Anyone who’s ever written anything is familiar with that chorus.”

— Kathryn Harrison

From AdviceToWriters

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