If he has enough original observations stored in his subconscious, certain literary values might be present in his work for a while (among a lot of meaningless junk). But once he has used up that store of early impressions, he has nothing more to say. He merely grasped the general idea of what writing is, then coasted on his subconscious for a while, never attempting to analyze where his ideas came from, what he was doing, or why. Such a writer is antagonistic to any analysis; he is the type who tells you that “the cold hand of reason” is detrimental to his inspiration. He cannot function by means of reason, he says; if he begins to analyze, he feels, it will stop his inspiration altogether. (Given the way he functions, it would stop him.)
By contrast, if you know where your inspiration really comes from, you will never run out of material. A rational writer can stoke his subconscious just as one puts fuel in a machine. If you keep on storing things in your mind for your future writing and keep integrating your choice of theme to your general knowledge, allowing the scope of your writing to grow as your knowledge widens, then you will always have something to say, and you will find ever better ways to say it. You will not coast downhill after one outbreak of something valuable.
If part of your mind is still thinking, “Yes, but how do I know writing isn’t an innate talent?” chances are that either you will not start writing at all, or you will start, but in perpetual terror. Each time you write something good, you will ask yourself: “But can I do it next time?”
I have heard many famous writers complain that they have literal anxiety attacks before starting a book. It does not matter how successful they are; since they do not fully know what the process of writing consists of—or, incidentally, why a book is or is not successful—they are always at the mercy of this terror: “Yes, ten novels were good, but how do I know that my eleventh one will be good?”
Instead of improving, these writers usually either maintain a precarious level or, more likely, deteriorate over the years. An example is Somerset Maugham. As far as one can gather his views from his writing, he does not believe that writing is a rational process; and his later works are much less interesting than his early ones. Though he has not quite written himself out, the quality has deteriorated.
In order to form your own literary taste and put it under your conscious control, always account for what you do or do not like in your reading—and always give yourself reasons. At first you might identify only the immediate reasons for your estimate of any given paragraph or book. As you practice, you will go deeper and deeper. (Do not memorize your premises. Merely store them in your subconscious; they will be there when you need them.)
It is possible for a writer to hold good literary premises by default, meaning: by imitation or by feeling. Many writers do, and thus cannot identify the reasons for their writing. They say, “I write because it just comes to me,” and they fully believe that they have innate talent or that some mystical power dictates to them. Do not count on this mystical power to give you that talent. If you are tempted to ask, “Why can’t I just rely on instinct?” my answer is that your “instinct” has not worked for you so far. You do not have writing premises; the mere doubt on your part is what indicates it. And even if you do have writing premises, or show what people conventionally call “indications of talent,” you would stay on the same level for a whole career and never rise to writing what you really want.
To acquire literary premises, or to develop those you already have, what you need is conscious knowledge. That is what I offer in this course.
2
Literature as an Art Form
Literature is an art form which uses language as its toot—and language is an objective instrument.
You cannot seriously approach writing without the strict premise that words have objective meanings. If you approach it with the idea “I sort of know what I mean and my words sort of express something,” you have only yourself to blame if people fail to grasp your intended meaning, or get the opposite meaning.
If you are not sure of