INTUITION is not a FEELING

 

A few months ago, I read an excellent post about intuition and its place in the writing process. See it here.

 

It wasn’t news to me that good writing is intuitive even as it uses the cloak of logical and systematic exposition.

 

The most precious nugget the post gave me is the articulation that intuition shouldn’t be confused with a feeling or an emotion.

 

Instead, think of intuition as the mind processing information so fast and connecting the dots before we have the words, or articulation, to explain it rationally.  

 

Intuition is an awareness of a high order. Creating without it yields something akin to assembly manuals of the sort that come with various gizmos. That’s “technical writing,” and writers of poetry or prose aren’t doing that.

 

Good writing connects the dots before we have the words to name them.

DOES ANALYZING OTHERS’ WORK MAKE A YOU A BETTER WRITER?

 

One of the many gifts of being a beta reader is learning how a story hits the spot (or doesn’t) on the reader’s end. I have gained as much from being a Beta as from being the one who received feedback from another.

 

There is another form of reading, one cultivated in academia, that imposes analysis on renowned books. The philosophies behind different forms of analysis are super-imposed on the text. I’ve done my share in school, and have never found it to help my writing. For that matter, I haven’t found those who excelled in literary analysis to be strong writers of original fiction. I have personal friends I will never name who fit into this category: strong academic background, and their original fiction suffered from the indoctrination.

 

One may argue, reading this article, that any analysis of others’ work is beneficial when forging with your own story. I will not deny this can and does happen. But as a rule, effective original fiction is intuitive, and the analyzing mind needs to go into lower gear, like a barely audible background hum, in order to tell a story well.

 

Another pithy way of saying this, paraphrasing Dr. Seuss: try to forget what you learned in Rule-going School. Let the intuitive life force flow. Get on the boat, and let it sail down the river, only occasionally resorting to use the oars.

©Geraldine Aikman