selections if he wants a certain answer. You have to make your conscious mind do exactly that to your subconscious [computer]: you have to know what you are storing there and what kind of answers you are seeking. If you have stored the material properly, it will come to you.
Even so, there is no guarantee that you will work from nine to five at your desk and everything will always come out perfectly (unless you are a hack). What is guaranteed is that you will always be able to express exactly what you intended to express.
You have probably heard that no writer can ever fully express what he wanted to express; that every book is a disappointment to the author because it is only an approximation. Sinclair Lewis, a very good writer, once made such a remark. If you read his books, you will understand why. The themes that he wants to express are clear; the manner in which he expresses them is not always clear, particularly in the realm of emotions. He can express ideas and characterization up to a certain point, but in regard to deeper values, he is an unhappy repressor.
If a writer feels that he was unable fully to express what he wanted to express, it means that he did not know clearly what he wanted to express. He knew it only as a generalized package deal [a conglomeration of logically unrelated elements]; he had his theme defined approximately, but not sufficiently supported with full understanding of all the elements of that theme. That which you know clearly you can find the words for and you will express exactly.
If someone then challenges you and asks, “Why did you describe the sunrise in this way?” you will be able to answer. You will be able to give a conscious reason for every word in your description; but you did not have to know the reasons while writing.
I can give the reason for every word and every punctuation mark in Atlas Shrugged—and there are 645,000 words in it by the printer’s count. I did not have to calculate it all consciously when I was writing. But what I did was follow a conscious intention in relation to the novel’s theme and to every element involved in that theme. I was conscious of my purpose throughout the job—the general purpose of the novel and the particular purpose of every chapter, paragraph, and sentence.
To master the art of writing, you have to be conscious of why you are doing things—but do not edit yourself while writing. Just as you cannot change horses in the middle of a stream, so you cannot change premises in the middle of writing. When you write, you have to rely on your subconscious; you cannot doubt yourself and edit every sentence as it comes out. Write as it comes to you—then (next morning, preferably) turn editor and read over what you have written. If something does not satisfy you, ask yourself then why, and identify the premise you missed.
Trust your subconscious. If it does not deliver the kind of material you want, it will at least give you the evidence of what is wrong.
When you get stuck on a piece of writing, the reason is either that you have not sufficiently concretized the ideas you want to cover or that your purpose in this particular sequence is contradictory—that your conscious mind has given to your subconscious contradictory orders. I call this miserable state, which all writers know, “the squirms.” It consists either of the inability to write anything or of the fact that your writing suddenly comes out badly—it does not flow as you want it to and does not express your intention.
Suppose you start to write a love scene. You write a few lines of dialogue, and suddenly you do not know what to say next. Let us say that it is a tragic love scene which has to end with the two characters renouncing each other. You know that they have to come to the parting, but not how to bring them there. Anything you put down is somehow not what you want; maybe the dialogue seems repetitious, or it is not too meaningful. So you try again, and whatever comes out is still not right. That’s the squirms.
The trouble might lie in any one of the elements involved. It might be that you have not fully defined for yourself the attitude of the characters, or that you are not clear on the