space to write

the thing i like about art is how, as it's being created, it looks like a mess, but then it becomes something. in a way, watching a video of someone creating art affords more of an appreciation of the artwork. 

maybe writing is like that too - the first parts you write, or maybe even the first full draft, are not really good writing. 

I think that's actually what Susan Sontag meant when she said that her writing is smarter than her because she can rewrite it. I think she was talking about her final products - her published books and articles. That's a bit more prosaic than I originally thought. At first I thought she was talking about the alchemy/ the magic of writing - how, just by writing, you are producing something that is special and powerful. But now I think that she's talking more about how you can invest a lot of time and thought and research in working on your writing, so that it becomes something better than what you could write at any particular time - it's smarter than you can be when you are 'thinking on your feet'. 

like, how many times, have I had conversations, and then later on I think about the perfect reply - a statement that is much more smart and insightful than what I expressed at the time?.....and there's a feeling of frustration that - I think this is a particular weakness of mine actually - that I didn't give the smart reply at the time. 

I'm generally not good at responding in the moment....I go away and think about things, and then I react. 

this idea that the work is meant to start off rough and unformed, encourages me in my work on my novel, because my feeling about it is that it's going nowhere, or at least, I don't know where it's going, and it doesn't seem like a novel. 

i just keep opening it up from time to time and adding to it. I've written about 700 words so far. I'll definitely be able to keep going. lately there have been times when I didn't know what to write for my blog, so I opened my novel and worked on it. I think now that I've got this idea - which came from the conversation I had with my writer friend - I can write a whole book about it. Not that they gave me the idea...it was more like I told them my idea(s) and they encouraged me about it and I know they know what they're talking about. Before (and still now to some extent) I had/ have this idea about what it means to write a novel, and I have something I want to write about, and there's no mutual space for the two to occupy....the main thing I drew from the conversations I had is that the two can occupy a mutual space.