How do you write ?
(Translated from French)
When standing before a blank page and deciding to write on any given topic, there are two types of people: those who tell themselves "I must first gather all the available information" and those who think , "I will start writing what I think about the subject without any particular knowledge and we'll see afterwards if I need external sources of information."
The latter trusts their reasoning, their ability to approach a topic from the layperson's point of view. They enjoy searching for ideas by themselves, even if it exposes their own flaws, shortcomings, and impotence. They know they can always fill these gaps later if needed. They are flexible: they don't make a plan, they start writing and they modify the structure of their text as they go along, based on criticism (and self-criticism) and potential discoveries received and made afterwards. They don't prevent themselves from taking detours that will momentarily take them away from the main path, but will eventually return to the initial subject, enriched by their discoveries. This will require work and rework, changes, and sustained attention, but they are driven by the pleasure of discovery. This is how certain novelists, like Stephen King, proceed, writing as their characters speak to them: they are literally just listening to the story that unfolds within them, they are just transcribing it onto paper or a computer.
The former begins by doing research, they want to know the state of the art on a topic. They read the main authors, the commentators, the glossators. They will try to synthesize, to highlight the different currents, to see the forces at play. Then they will make a plan that exposes, if possible in a dialectical manner, the different positions of authority figures and will try to develop personal thought from all of this. In this latter approach, the temptation is great to completely erase oneself from the subject and to speak "on behalf” of such and such author without ever taking a stand, without taking any risk other than a commentary that will attempt to highlight a new idea born from the confrontation of opposed points of view.
The materiality against which the author stumbles is mainly external, unlike the other scheme where the materiality is internal.
This is a path that is both more comfortable in that the author does not really step outside of the landmarks set before them and does not take too many risks in developing their own original thinking and more laborious (thus requiring abnegation and patience) because it obliges to review the history of what has already been said and written. The temptation here is to delay the writing indefinitely because there is always something we missed reding or perhaps we misunderstood what we read. The materiality against which the author stumbles is mainly external, unlike the other scheme where the materiality is internal.
Beforehand, I was more of the first type but now I am increasingly leaning towards the second. I have given up on planning and I outline the plan after having written the text. Indeed, by outlining this plan afterwards, I can realize that the structure is defective and modify the plan accordingly and rework the text. This is a more organic way of operating, which better respects the natural development of thinking rather than applying an a priori a scheme (be it thesis-antithesis-synthesis type).
It also allows us to see how we think and identify our flaws. For me, for example, I saw that I had a heavy style and I tended to repeat myself, to reiterate arguments that had already been developed earlier, which confuses the reader and makes the argument unclear. It's a way of seeing yourself thinking from the outside and improving by putting yourself in the place of a reader who knows nothing about the subject. However, it has the disadvantage of potentially being more energy-consuming in the end, leading to dead ends and giving the impression of going in circles. It is better suited for adventurers of thinking than for hard workers of planning. It is more painful at first and lighter and more joyful afterwards, I would say.
Writing should above all be a way to emancipate oneself from one's own conditioning and to develop one's skills
The main problem with the first type is that it only reinforces a natural submission to authority, to "schoolism", and therefore will not allow the development of confidence in one's own abilities to produce personal thinking, the question of originality being rather secondary. Yet writing should above all, in my opinion, be a way to emancipate oneself from one's own conditioning and to develop one's skills and existence rather than a means to please, to convey a message and to make oneself known, although sometimes a happy coincidence between the two can be found.
Fundamentally, we should not write to be read but to better understand ourselves. But to better understand ourselves, we need the gaze of others, which is less suspected of complacency (so prefer the stranger rather than the friend). Therefore, being read is a means to better know oneself but not an end in itself. If you enjoy it and people read you, that's the cherry on top. Enjoy your writing.