Steven Pinker in his book The Sense of Style writes;
“A coherent text is a designed, and ordered tree of sections within sections criss crossed by arcs that track topics, points, actors and themes, and held together by connections that tie one proposition to the next.
Like other designed objects it comes about not by accident but by drafting a blueprint, attending to details and maintaining a sense of harmony and balance.”
Pinkers' description of the process of writing is both succinct and insightful. It could equally be applied to the process of composing music or creating the design of an industrial product.
As Pinker says new ideas and better solutions to problems don’t fall out of the sky. They come precisely by the process Pinker describes but what Pinker fails to mention is how much of a struggle this process can be.
Pinker makes it sound simple. It's not. At least; not all of the time. Seasoned writers might find it easy to create that designed and ordered tree of sections within sections that Pinker refers to, but for most of us most of the time it's a serious challenge to get our ideas across in a manner that resonates with the reader, or to create a design that is refreshing in style and innovative in its functioning.
Writing, design and art are full of mystery, uncertainty and jumbled ideas that obstruct the pathway. It’s an assemblage of elements that require time and effort before they rest easily alongside each other.
I found this piece of Graffiti art on a wall behind the beach adjacent to the airport at Denpasar in Bali. Maybe it is still there? It looks as though the work flowed effortlessly and purposefully from the hand of the artist…and maybe it did?
