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Insight

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Great writing is succinct and profound. Some simple quotes are more renowned and more valued than some of the longest books ever written. Effort is sadly not worth much of anything. Greatness in writing is the ability to perceive and express what others had the notion to say but not the verbal facility to place into words.

Thomas Wolfe is a writer who is considered to have put monumental effort into writing but never seemed to write anything considerably profound. Thus, Wolfe takes a backseat to more capable writers.

The difference between effort and insight is portrayed quite beautifully between Hemingway and Faulkner. With much less effort Hemingway rivals the significance of Faulkner. In fact one of Hemingway's quotes expresses this difference in writing style.

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." (Ernest Hemingway)

It has once been quipped that Faulkner must have been exhausted for having written in the way that he did. And with all that effort, all that passion, all that bleeding of his soul upon the page, "A Farewell to Arms" is a better known work than say, "The Sound and the Fury."

In fact part of Faulkner's brilliance is not attributed to his writing style, but for his clever creation of a fictitious county, Yoknapatawpha. This fictitious creation gives us insights into the mentality of the south, whereas Hemingway set out to be a writer of the world for the world. Faulkner was quite content with recording the intricacies of the South in vivid verbosity. Thus, it is Faulkner's insight into the South AND his unique style that we value. Faulkner is also considered brilliant for his use of stream of consciousness which by its very nature is an effortless endeavor, for the writer is not editing his think, but merely thinking freely. Thus, his understanding that one could write as he thinks has had a profound influence upon literature, but the method's nature is effortless.

Effort itself may be counter productive to the writer for the amount of time spent upon each sentence, turn of phrase, and expression of sentiment may dilute the amount of insights that he is able to place upon the page. Should the writer spend ten hours perfecting a thousand words, we would be deprived of the other articles he could have written in that time, yet should he write too quickly, or too sparsely

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