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Every Writer is Actually These Four People
Each character serves a purpose, the key is not to mix them up!
Susan Sontag writes in her journal:
The writer must be four people:
1) The nut, the obsédé
2) The moron
3) The stylist
4) The critic
1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.
A great writer has all 4 but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2; they’re most important.
Professor Betty Flowers also writes of four different inner characters (via Rachel Jepsen):
Turning to the board, I write four words: “madman,” “architect,” “carpenter,” “judge.”
…
“What happens when you get stuck is that two competing energies are locked horn to horn, pushing against each other. One is the energy of what I’ll call your ‘madman.’ He is full of ideas, writes crazily and perhaps rather sloppily, gets carried away by enthusiasm or anger, and if really let loose, could turn out ten pages an hour.
“The second is a kind of critical energy-what I’ll call the ‘judge.’ He’s been educated and knows a sentence fragment when he sees one. He peers over…
