"A man can make himself put down what comes, even if it seems nauseating nonsense; tomorrow some of it may not seem wholly nonsense at all"
About this Quote
Lucas is giving craft advice that sounds almost like moral advice: swallow your own bad first draft. The bracing phrase "nauseating nonsense" isn’t just colorful self-disgust; it’s a refusal of the tasteful myth that good writing arrives clean. For a critic steeped in standards, that admission carries extra bite. He’s not romanticizing the muse. He’s instructing the intelligent, inhibited mind to do something humiliating on purpose: get words onto the page before they deserve to be there.
The key move is the time shift. "Tomorrow" is the argument. Lucas treats judgment as something that can be postponed without being betrayed. That’s the subtext: you don’t defeat nonsense by policing it in real time; you defeat it by externalizing it, letting it sit, then returning with a colder eye. In other words, discipline isn’t perfectionism, it’s sequencing. Draft now, evaluate later.
There’s also a sly democratizing impulse in "A man can make himself". Lucas frames writing as an act of will, not a credential. Coming from a critic (a profession associated with gatekeeping), it reads like an olive branch to creators: the messy stage is not evidence of fraudulence, it’s evidence of process.
Context matters: Lucas lived through an era when "nonsense" could be literal propaganda and cultural collapse, and criticism often doubled as moral triage. His line insists that meaning is sometimes discovered retroactively - that coherence can be excavated from the rubble of initial confusion. It’s a small defense of experimentation, and a larger attack on the fear of looking stupid while thinking.
The key move is the time shift. "Tomorrow" is the argument. Lucas treats judgment as something that can be postponed without being betrayed. That’s the subtext: you don’t defeat nonsense by policing it in real time; you defeat it by externalizing it, letting it sit, then returning with a colder eye. In other words, discipline isn’t perfectionism, it’s sequencing. Draft now, evaluate later.
There’s also a sly democratizing impulse in "A man can make himself". Lucas frames writing as an act of will, not a credential. Coming from a critic (a profession associated with gatekeeping), it reads like an olive branch to creators: the messy stage is not evidence of fraudulence, it’s evidence of process.
Context matters: Lucas lived through an era when "nonsense" could be literal propaganda and cultural collapse, and criticism often doubled as moral triage. His line insists that meaning is sometimes discovered retroactively - that coherence can be excavated from the rubble of initial confusion. It’s a small defense of experimentation, and a larger attack on the fear of looking stupid while thinking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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