“I write to discover what I know.” Flannery O’Connor
Writing is a way of clarifying our thinking, to play with ideas in our mind then on the page. To capture the ephemeral and make it material so that it can be examined, understood, and improved upon.
We feel more than we know intellectually. Great fiction is not an attempt to dissect a situation and understand it, not to explain it to others. Fiction is an attempt to seize the moment, to catch a fleeting feeling and transfer it to another so that they can experience and live what we know.
Writing is the hard work of reducing experience to symbols.