A writer, and speaker alike, weaves his piece. He weaves thoughts into sentences and paragraphs and connects them into a beautiful unity. He uses connectives to connect groups of words (clauses) to form sentences and to connect those sentences to create paragraphs. Although he knows that the paragraph is the basic unit of thought, he is aware that a group of disjointed paragraphs thrown together won’t communicate the logical and cohesive message that he envisions for the reader. So, he uses transitional connectives to connect paragraphs together into larger thought units called chapter-sized segments. Then he links segments to create the whole. Through these connections, he shows how his train of thought flows throughout the piece from his first word to his last period. As such, consciously or unconsciously, he employs intelligible patterns of organization and builds structural relations between the details and the parts to create a whole that is his composition or piece.
His work is not random; though great spontaneity is involved, and he doesn’t consciously think of every choice he makes.[1] He is conditioned by his genes, upbringing, training, and the spirit God breathed into him to co-create with God. He starts with a vision of what he wants to do edged on his heart and mind; He begins with the end in mind.[2] That is the first creation, which is mental and spiritual. As he weaves, that vision takes shape. Threads of words and sentences fall into place in ways that surprise his conscious mind, but not his unconscious. He gets excited and even inspired by the tapestry he weaves with his words. It ministers to him before it ever ministers to the reader. When you look at the tapestry that is his piece, you see different hues of the same colors coalescing into paragraphs that carry the same thought to form a segment. Even within the paragraphs, the texture of each sentence feels different. The whole looks beautiful and every compositional unit plays a part in producing the beauty that is the whole. The whole is the second or physical creation and is made possible because he intentionally creates relations between the parts.
[1] 90% or so of our decisions are made with our unconscious mind. Yet, these decisions are not random for that matter but conditioned by training and inborn mental processes.
[2] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), Kindle edition, habit 2; Covey nicely presents this truth of the importance of first and second creation.
