Judging by books on writing by writers, writers don’t completely understand how they do it.

Fiction writers know how they get into the right frame of mind to write, and how they engage their voice(s), muse, and characters. Moreover, they have observed life attentively, studied other writers, and practiced writing for decades.

Yet, I have never found a book by a writer that really explained how their mind works during writing. Is this because they are writers, not philosophers? Perhaps. Or because they fear that self-analysis might undermine their creativity? Perhaps.

But if great novelists have multiple personality: Which one of a novelist’s personalities would know enough about all of their other personalities to have a complete understanding of their writing process?

Now, in theory, it would be possible for all of the writer’s personalities to hold a writer’s conference, so to speak—in the writer’s mind—where they could meet and discuss what everyone has been contributing to the writing process. But most writers haven’t done this.

So the books that have been written by writers on writing have left the reader still wondering how they do it.