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/lit/ - Literature

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4192552 No.4192552 [Reply] [Original]

Do you ever think about how your mind works, /lit? How you seem to associate words and feelings and senses, how you try to form sentences out of sounds and symbols?
I have this thing where I tend to rely more on the sounds and general "colours" of words (instead of the direct word-definition relationship) when it comes to writing. Since I consider myself relatively well-read, I imagine most of the phrases I put together are just subconscious liftings from previous texts, but there's also the element of intuition in my writing. When I'm trying to craft a sentence, it's like I can feel, almost hear the words falling into place, but I just don't have them at hand yet. What about you guys?

>> No.4192574

>>4192552
I think I kind of get what your saying, like in language I sort of focus more on the emotions or feelings I associate with words than with their objective definition, not that I use words just for emotional effect, but it's like, I really emphasize connotation, almost more than I emphasize denotation

>> No.4192586

>>4192574
Exactly. It's like, in my head, words have a kind of double meaning, a hidden "something else" that influences how I put them down. Like I said, I can sort of hear the general sound of the sentence before I actually write it, I just need to find the words that fit into that sound or colour.
It also influences me when I want to play around with different words. I'll write something like "a hushed breeze tended the marigolds, plucking them into vibrant motion" and play around with the word "tended" because the sound of "-ded" doesn't make sense, and so I'll replace it with something like "tendered" and it will "sound" better, but it will also "look" better since the word "red" is there and kind of gives the phrasing more colour, more texture. I don't know.

>> No.4192591

i know how you feel, monsieur. when i am drunk i read crooked, but when i am high i read too straight, so that -- haha!! -- i cry like a woman whose husband has just raped her and set her children on fire!!! ha! ha! ha! more more, less less, adjust the clock, germanic precision, teutonic seriousness, exact, acute, removed from error--- that is sober, that is german.

what you ask for monsieur, i believe, is more common

>> No.4192615

>>4192591
Yeah, that's a part of it (which is why I posted the picture of Mallarme), but there's something else there which I can't describe.

>> No.4192618

I think I understand, OP.
When I write, I really want it to be fluid and having a good vibe to it. That's why I like Dostoevsky and Nabokov; they make it sound so natural.

>> No.4192628

>>4192618
Exactly so. I gravitated toward Nabokov and Scriabin (Russian composer) because of their highly-aesthetic treatments of synesthesia and how it influenced their works. I'm not as gifted, but I at least rely on my intuition to clear the way towards writing, and then I let my sensibility evenly-pave the road.

>> No.4192638

>>4192628
Yes, that's why I don't like excessive editing. I let spontaneity and intuition take their course to carve my writing.