Intuition

The most pow­er­ful tool, I think, the writer has is her or his intuition.

What is most often thought to be intu­ition is direct or imme­di­ate insight. And, indeed, if you are a suc­cess­ful writer you are often asked what “inspired you” to write such and such. This inspi­ra­tion is often thought of as, “The spir­i­tu­al per­cep­tion or imme­di­ate knowl­edge, ascribed to angel­ic and spir­i­tu­al beings, with which vision and knowl­edge are iden­ti­cal.” I am quot­ing, of course, from a dictionary.

But as I see it, intu­ition has noth­ing to do with spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. It has every­thing to do with the way you have con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly trained your think­ing. To become a good writer you have to think like a writer. Well, not exact­ly. You have to think like a read­er.

If you spend a lot of time watch­ing movies, watch­ing tele­vi­sion, play­ing video games—nothing intrin­si­cal­ly wrong with any of them—your under­stand­ing of nar­ra­tion will be shaped by that expe­ri­ence, that is, your so-called intu­ition will be shaped to con­form to those nar­ra­tive structures.

I believe there is a lot of dia­logue in my writ­ing because—when quite young—I was a devot­ed lis­ten­er to kids’ radio.

Over and over again when con­front­ed with a writ­ing prob­lem, I try to feel my way. What I have learned to pay atten­tion to, is that a piece of writ­ing feels good—or bad. That feel­ing is informed, more than any­thing, by a life of reading.

Just today, after a long peri­od of frus­tra­tion, I made a major shift in some­thing I have been writ­ing. It had not felt good. Now, to my relief it does. What is my intuition?

It reads well.