Wave in the Mind: August 23, 2015

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apprently to do with words) and then. as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.  But no doubt I shall think differently next year.

Letter to Vita Sackville-West

March 16, 1926 (L3  247)