Not knowing and writing

Any writer’s relationship to the state of “not-knowing” is complicated. One response is to rush in quickly and fill up the scary silence and space. And while intense, white-water sensibilities can astound (the brilliant, torrential David Foster Wallace, for example), in many other cases, writing born of this response, this impulse to fill all gaps, feels instead eager to get the job done. Such a drive, the precise opposite of Negative Capability, is often marked by an insular, fussy density, reliance on a Big Story (to the exclusion of say, lyrical lingering and curious reflection), and, very often, a forcing of pattern instead of an authentically discovered series of alignments. (Lia Purpura at Brevity)

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