Why I Write Expository Prose:

 "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

- Joan Didion

 Thanks for the Joan Didion quote. It resonates with me. Writers gotta write. All of my life I have been a writer in that I need to write, need to work things out through my fingers. Not writing journals or diaries--that never has worked for me. Writing to share ideas with other people, that is what I am driven to do. Expository prose.

There is a fine architectural structure to expository prose that has always resonated with me. I was fortunate in High School to get to take a class on Expository Prose (we used the Norton Anthology of Expository Prose) and it opened my eyes to the beauty of the form,

Didion hints at something that I so love about the process. When you work out your thoughts in writing for others, your thoughts and words become concrete, out there, and you can look at them and see them more objectively. They are suddenly a lot more inflexible, and the gaps and inconsistencies and fissures stand out in sharper relief than when they are in your head or you are just talking to yourself. The process forces you to go back and wrestle with those gaps, the inconsistencies in your thinking, the weaknesses in your evidence, and I absolutely love this logical revisioning. And when you reach a point where you feel like it is tight and consistent and perhaps others even agree, well, man, that is as satisfying for me as making a super meal where all the flavors meld and folks are quietly happy eating away.