It’s easy to assume that Joan Didion’s writing came that way when you pick up nearly any of her sentences—those slender, slightly unsettling constructions that seem to arrive already complete, as if they were never absent. flowing onto the page from a private, leisurely location, hardly requiring editing, already molded into what was required. That impression is most likely incorrect. Strangely enough, it’s also the point.
Great prose is characterized by its ability to conceal all the work that went into it. Removing all the barrier between the words on the page and the experience that is developing inside someone’s head is a kind of courtesy to the reader rather than a trick. When it functions, the reader begins to inhabit a world rather than just perceive sentences. The writing disappears. It’s no coincidence that you’re invisible. It is the entire goal, and it is far more expensive than it appears.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a researcher who spent decades studying what he called the flow state—a state of deep, absorbed focus that makes challenging work feel oddly automatic—described the mechanism behind this in the context of psychology rather than literature. Time collapsing, self-consciousness vanishing, and the feeling that the work was creating itself rather than being produced through conscious effort were all described by musicians, athletes, and artists.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi observed that when a person’s skill level was appropriate for the task at hand—not too simple, not too difficult—this state tended to manifest. This is both helpful and, at times, quietly devastating for writers. It implies that sessions in which nothing works and every word feels incorrect are indicative of misalignment rather than failure, with the task exceeding the current skill and the challenge just out of reach. Sitting with that is uncomfortable. However, compared to the alternative mythology, it is more truthful.
The Muse is the alternative mythology. The writer is essentially a receiver, waiting for something greater than themselves to come through the antenna, according to the theory that good writing comes rather than is created. One version of this is safe and even helpful for relaxing before a session. However, if taken literally, it causes serious harm. It creates writers who sit in lovely residences, such as quiet rooms funded by fellowships or lakeside cottages, and wait and wait and produce nothing, believing that the lack of inspiration is a sign of inadequacy. The issue is waiting. Eventually, the writing emerges from something less romantic and more disciplined than the myth permits.
In reality, accumulated revision is where it originates. The story goes that Ernest Hemingway rewrote the final page of A Farewell to Arms 47 times before he felt it was correct. It has been repeated so many times that it is now impossible to verify, but it is too structurally correct to be disregarded. It’s highly likely that the sentences that appeared to be complete were put together, taken apart, and then put back together multiple times. The painful gap between a writer’s critical judgment—their capacity to identify quality work—and their present capacity to produce it is what Ira Glass famously referred to as the “taste gap.” The gap doesn’t last forever. Iteration and volume cause it to close. However, it necessitates spending a lot of time writing things you know aren’t yet good enough, which is really uncomfortable in a way that no one who reads the final product ever sees.
This process has a helpful framework provided by the invisibility principle. At the sentence level, excellent writing is that which the reader can imagine rather than understand. When you read that a character “said angrily,” your brain takes note of a directive. When you read that he “grunted through gritted teeth,” your mind conjures up a picture. Not because adverbs are inherently incorrect, but rather because anything that alerts the reader to the fact that they are being told a story breaks the spell, the second version does less explaining and more showing. Vocabulary that is flowery works. Sentence lengths that are consistent work. It is accomplished by obscure allusions that don’t target any specific reader. The reader is momentarily removed from the experience and reminded that they are holding a book as each minor infraction triggers the mechanism.
It’s difficult to ignore how infrequently working writers have candid conversations about any of this. Admitting struggle feels like a sign of professional vulnerability in the literary genius industry because of the interviews, profiles, and carefully chosen anecdotes about prolific output. Word counts are a topic that writers discuss. They hardly ever talk about the 100,000 words they threw away, the six-month blocks, or the unsuccessful manuscripts that ended up in a drawer. However, those are not the exception to the craft; rather, they are its core. They are perhaps the most important component of the final product, even though by the time it reaches the reader, they are completely gone.
The ultimate goal of the entire endeavor is that erasure. The work is successful when it hides the amount of effort that went into it. This means that the greatest compliment a reader can give—”I couldn’t stop, it just flowed”—perfectly captures the writer’s accomplishment while remaining largely silent about what it truly took.
Chloe Olliver is senior editor at vclib.org, where she leads editorial coverage of literary criticism, political commentary, cultural analysis, and the evolving relationship between literature and public life across New York City and beyond. With a career spanning the intersection of literary journalism, political commentary, and educational publishing, Chloe brings both rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an accessible editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant.