When Instinct Becomes Judgement

A tiny beer glass—my idea of torment.

I’m fond of beer—not in excess, but there is something acutely disturbing about small measures, especially unexpected. It did, though, set me thinking about small measures generally—and particularly about how little we sometimes recognise what we already have before beginning something new.

When I first experimented with writing, I had no formal grounding in creative writing. What I did have, although I didn’t recognise it at the time, was a lifetime of observing people, their behaviour and the world around me. Whether any of that could be turned into fiction was another matter entirely.

I started with the age-old question—“could I?” Meaning, did I have, or could I acquire, the ability to write? So, I devised a test: the “experiment” I mentioned in It’s Never Too Late to Begin, the Journal introduction.

I started with nothing—no storyline, no characters, no plan—only knowing I wanted to describe something that might stimulate an idea for a story. Then I wondered what condition, as an aspiring writer, I would most want in order to achieve my goal. The answer was absence of distraction, which I interpreted as living the life of a recluse.

Initially, I thought of a mountain-top location, but rejected that in favour of a secluded bay, bordered by two rocky promontories and backed by an impenetrable forest. I wrote a description of it in the first person, as someone viewing the scene in front of him, later realising I had created my first character—the hero. I circulated this word picture to anyone who was interested, accompanied by a few questions to see whether they were seeing it as I intended.

When I look back at this “experiment”, designed to determine if I was potentially a writer, I wonder at how incredibly naive I was to believe that a tool so crude could infer literary competence. What it did do, though, was ignite an explosion of story threads which were exciting beyond belief.

Questions abounded. Initially, I had the answer to only one: why was our hero there? To seek isolation, ensuring there was no excuse for failure. Then I realised the hero was the “who” and, with the “why”, it started to look like the journalistic five Ws and one H mantra. The “what”, “where”, “when” and “how” followed quickly. That process continued with every changing circumstance throughout the novel.

Before I go any further, I want to reassure you that these inspirations—and, more importantly, their consequences—did not arrive by divine intervention or latent talent. They are merely the result of asking the sort of questions you might ask whilst reading a novel or watching a film—would that character really have acted that way, for example.

Perhaps that is where instinct quietly begins—not as some mystical gift, but as accumulated observation. Most of us spend decades watching people succeed, fail, hide disappointment, feign confidence, cope with loss and occasionally surprise themselves. Long before we understand the mechanics of writing, we already possess a lifetime of experience interpreting human behaviour. We may not recognise it as judgement at first because it arrives quietly, often disguised as a feeling that “something doesn’t ring true.”

At the outset, instinct can simply be impulse wearing the clothes of confidence. But over time experience settles somewhere beneath the surface and instinct slowly sharpens into something more useful. Not certainty—certainly not wisdom—but perhaps an ability to sense authenticity. A sentence sounds false. A reaction feels forced. A character suddenly behaves in a way they simply wouldn’t. Even before we fully understand technique, we often recognise honesty.

None of this diminishes the importance of learning the craft. Study matters enormously; every skill benefits from learning, practice and humility. But perhaps we shouldn’t overlook what we bring with us before that learning even begins.

Perhaps instinct becomes effective judgement at the point where experience, curiosity and self-awareness finally begin working together. In writing, as in life, that process probably never truly finishes.