Vostorg & Conception and Vdoknovenie & Reconstruction

[Terrance]

Sock and Buskin
Met John Ruskin
in a motel on Lolita Lane
"Give us a grand idea, dear John, 
we've got stage fright and writer's block."




When a writer settles down to his reconstructive work ...  Firey Vostorg
has accomplished his task and cool Vdokhnovenie puts on her glasses. The
pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words
all being there, written in invisible ink and calmoring to become
visible. You might if you choose develop any part of the picture, for
the  idea of sequence does not really exist as far as the author is
concerned. Sequence arises only because words have to be written one
after the other on consecutive pages, just as the reader's mind must
have time to go through the book, at least the first time he reads it.
Time and sequence cannot exist in the author's mind because no time
element and no space element had ruled the initial vision. If the mind
were constructed on optional lines and if a book could be read in the
same way as a painting is taken in by the eye, that is without the
bother of working from left to right and without the absurdity of
beginnings and ends, this would be the ideal way of appreciating a
novel, for thus the author saw it at the moment of its conception. 

ALCS

But Sloth's offspring, though bad -- to paraphrase the Shangri-Las --
are not
always evil, for example what Aquinas terms Uneasiness of the Mind, or
"rushing after various things without rhyme or reason," which, "if it
pertains to
the imaginative power... is called curiosity." It is of course precisely
in such
episodes of mental traveling that writers are known to do good work,
sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from
Beyond, having hypnagogic adventures that with luck can be recovered
later on.
Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

"Nearer, my Couch, to Thee"