What to say when I do not know what.

                  Sometimes words pour, importunate, like it or not. However welcome, such subjection to my subject wearies, its manacles chafe. Does anyone enjoy feeling used? We crave freedom of choice, we claim, but when we possess it, how it weighs. Not knowing “what to say” rapidly unravels into self-distrust, even self-disgust. Why add a syllable to the world’s oversupply? For the sport (I know the answer); to fish must I need food for supper?

                  We do what we do, not to doubt who we’d be if we didn’t. I am – now, finally, after so many decades of yearning to be – one who writes – not for a living but to live – and if I don’t, I’m… nothing, a cypher, why bother being? I write then, partially, in self-defense, not to be undone by not doing. I write to beguile, impress, discover, of course, but these motives explain, exonerate my necessity, which would persist without them. To exist we must be somebody, we cannot just be: that is our human peculiarity: self-definition is self-defense.

                  So I am… “a writer”: that is my cassock, surplice, stole, devotion, pectoral cross. I must write as a priest must pray, to honor my calling. My pride won’t permit me to “run out of” things to say.

                  Though I sometimes chafe at my obligation, I rejoice in my submission. The work interests always and sometimes results in delight. I love the suspense – today might be the day! – and the shimmering squirming creatures hauled from the depths. I love how my pages fill with sentences that say something, otherwise no dice, and how consonance or dissonance may bend the direction of a thought. My words tug, I yank, in a friendly tussle.

                  Such bobbing on a word-stream bears scant relation to how writing is taught. It’s taught (where it’s still taught) as a necessary evil, a competency one must master to get ahead. Machines now compose more capably than most humans. Let them! What joy vying with a machine!

                  I write for fun. Yes, there are rules, as a tennis court has lines, otherwise there would be no game. We cannot play together without rules. The fun is the testing, the contest, tactics, choices, surprising bounces, how the game unfolds, never the same twice, the contrast of styles. The better the player, the less predictable.

                  As playing teaches us to play, saying teaches me to say. Every session is an experiment, an outing with new findings. This is why purpose-driven writing (legal, scientific, academic, instructional, etc.) is typically intolerable: one can feel its producer groaning for an impossible precision, like Sisyphus pushing his rock. Truth laughs at precision. I can’t “say what I mean,” because I don’t know what I mean until I say.

                  But this is chaos, the pedagogue protests, impossible to teach!

                  Teach writing like tennis, I suggest. You need to know the rules, the tried and true, before you try for truth: this is a dropshot, lob, semi-colon. Correct grammar must be understood before one can meaningfully violate its norms. But know there is no right way to write, only what feels right right now, fingers crossed.

                   I write to be – and writing makes being worthwhile. Writing makes me look, see, ponder, dare. Every sentence renders judgment: is this true? – new? – is my listener still listening? Or has the old gasbag gabbled into garrulity – the specter I most dread? The moment I’m not cavorting, I clap my book shut, a sound Henry recognizes in his sleep. Finally – time for our walk!