ON WRITING

1) Every text (book, article, photo, film, whatever) triggers FIRST an immediate emotional response.  Make a note of your FIRST IMMEDIATE emotional reaction. This is the raw material.
Write it down if it helps. EX: curious to find out more, intrigued, repulsed, fascinated and repulsed at the same time, bored, offended, pleased, tickled, annoyed etc. etc. etc.

2) At the end of reading/screening a text we are left with a DIFFUSED sensation: pleasure, anxiety, anger, pain, sympathy, empathy, antipathy, you name it. Make a note of the TONE of your emotional state.

3) Reflect back and report: what was your FIRST emotional response? What was the DIFFUSED sensation left?  In between FIRST and DIFFUSED there was some THINKING.  This thinking is MENTAL PROCESSING, It starts with RANDOM THOUGHTS, then THOUGHTS GET ORGANIZED.

4) Last stage: THOUGHTS become IDEAS. Ideas are thoughts that are communicable, that you can translate into a language that others can understand.  That requires ARGUMENTS. ARGUMENTS illustrate your ideas, ideas that derive from thoughts, which, in turn derive from the chaos of emotions.

5) You can describe the process, or you can focus on the thoughts, or the emotions. But in order to do so, you must have AN IDEA of what you are talking about.

6) It's very very simple. It's the simplest and best way to write, because you write about things you know, namely YOURSELF and the way your emotions become ideas. If you write FROM INSIDE OUT, you cannot go wrong. But you must start there.

READING

1. Get close to the text.

2. Read slowly at first. Sound the words in your mind. If necessary, "lip read" to slow yourself down.

3. Take notes of whatever strikes you. Make it a dialogue with yourself: a word you don't know; a sharp idea; a revealing detail; your mood; your guesses; a personal memory. Write down the page number.