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If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit

I just came across this from Wittgenstein in 1938, cited here:

Lying to oneself about oneself, deceiving yourself about the pretence in your own state of will, must have a harmful influence on [one’s] style; for the result will be that you cannot tell what is genuine in the style and what is false …. If I perform to myself then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit …. If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing

This suggests to me something quite profound about writing and reflexivity. Without the cultivation of reflexivity, your writing will be mannered or overly stylised. The only way to find an authorial voice is to do the work necessary to understand who you are and what you want to say as that person.

This is perhaps the aspect of a creative practice most at risk of being lost due to the diffusion of LLMs.

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