I like the title for this entry, but I don't think this musing will quite match up with it.

One of the disadvantages of writing a novel without an outline is that my cone of knowledge about what is coming up is limited.  The "cone of knowledge" is what I know that I'm going to be writing next, sort of like the cone of light your car casts ahead of you when you're driving a Nevada highway at night.  Occasionally I get a good glimpse down the road and I roll pretty fast.  Fast for me, in this context, is writing in the 1,000 word per hour range.  But when the cone shuts down and I don't see what's coming up, the words slow down.  In this case, I go back to what's already written and deepen it.  I'm still growing the story, but I'm doing it from the inside rather than adding new stuff at the leading edge.  Since my drafts have a tendence to be description and introspection thin, this kind of addition to the story is necessary.  While I'm noodling around with the interior of the story, I'm also thinking about what happens next so I can go on.

I write short stories basically the same way, although a story is short enough that I only go through the slow to fast pattern once.  The beginning is slow going, sometimes only a few hundred words for a couple of hours work, but once I see the end, I can get to it in a hurry.  It's not unusual for me to finish a story in a  2,000 word or so writing session.

Writing the novel is somewhat analogous to what happens when I write a short story, except that I go through the slow to fast phase a bunch of times.  I find this pattern interesting.

The slow to fast and back again pattern matches what we know about writing itself.  The act of writing is both generative and recursive.  The generative part just means that when we write, we also create new thought that we couldn't have created without writing.  I rely heavily on the generative quality of writing.  That's what gives me the faith to start a story (or a novel) when I know that I don't know everything that will go into it.  By writing, I will generate the thinking necessary to go on.

Writing is also recursive, which means that rereading what I've already written will also give me ideas about where I have to go next.  It's almost like the writing I've done becomes a conversation with someone other than me (just slightly), and that tension between what I said when I was that (slightly) different person whose head was in a different place and who I am now creates new thinking.

Watching someone write is fascinating (assuming you don't bore easily *g*).  I have had chances to watch others compose quite a bit as a school teacher.  Most writers go back and forth between little bursts of writing punctuated by moments of what looks like paralysis or a fugue.  I assume that during those times when the writer sits at the keyboard, fingers poised above the keys but not moving, the cone of knowledge has collapsed.  The headlights aren't penetrating the darkness.  When the fingers move again, the darkness has lifted enough to go on.  The difference between writers who can produce a couple of thousand words an hour while working and the ones who do a tenth of that is how long the pauses between typing bursts last.