passages-reusable-prose-demands-thoughts-writer-abandoned

# Reusable prose demands more cognitive work than a... > Reusable prose demands more cognitive work than a stream of consciousness. A stream of consciousness can move forward as soon as the next sentence appears. Reusable prose must be tested at several boundaries at once: the sentence, the quotation, the paragraph, the section, and the complete work. The writer has to preserve flow while repeatedly asking whether each important unit still contains a recoverable subject, a mechanism, a consequence, and a reason to exist. {{The labor of clear writing is the repeated refusal to make the reader finish the thoughts the writer abandoned.}} **Source:** [[projects/The Argument in Miniature - How I Write Quotations, Paragraphs, and Reusable Prose|The Argument in Miniature: How I Write Quotations, Paragraphs, and Reusable Prose]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Reusable prose demands more cognitive work than a stream of consciousness. A stream of consciousness can move forward as soon as the next sentence appears. Reusable prose must be tested at several boundaries at once: the sentence, the quotation, the paragraph, the section, and the complete work. The writer has to preserve flow while repeatedly asking whether each important unit still contains a recoverable subject, a mechanism, a consequence, and a reason to exist. The labor of clear writing is the repeated refusal to make the reader finish the thoughts the writer abandoned.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-reusable-prose-demands-thoughts-writer-abandoned ```