"I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again"
About this Quote
A working writer’s confession, delivered with the dry pragmatism of someone who’s survived deadlines, false starts, and the humiliations of inspiration. Westlake’s line isn’t romantic about creativity; it’s procedural. “I make a note” is the smallest unit of authorship, the low-stakes act that keeps you from losing whatever odd scrap just floated up. But the real hinge is “set it aside,” a move that treats ideas less like lightning bolts than like evidence bagged for later processing.
The subtext is that meaning is often retroactive. Writers don’t always understand what they’ve noticed when they notice it. Westlake, a crime novelist with a clockmaker’s sense of plot, implies that coherence is something you manufacture after the fact. The note is a seed without a label; the story is the moment you discover what it grows into. That “hope” matters: it admits a quiet anxiety beneath the competence. You can do the work, keep the records, build the system, and still not know if the fragments will ever click.
Contextually, it’s a craftsman’s worldview from a prolific professional, not a tortured-genius pose. Westlake wrote across identities and genres, where keeping a file of stray observations is less precious than necessary. The line captures the true economy of writing: you bank small insights against a future you can’t quite predict, trusting that your later self will be smarter, or at least luckier, than your current one.
The subtext is that meaning is often retroactive. Writers don’t always understand what they’ve noticed when they notice it. Westlake, a crime novelist with a clockmaker’s sense of plot, implies that coherence is something you manufacture after the fact. The note is a seed without a label; the story is the moment you discover what it grows into. That “hope” matters: it admits a quiet anxiety beneath the competence. You can do the work, keep the records, build the system, and still not know if the fragments will ever click.
Contextually, it’s a craftsman’s worldview from a prolific professional, not a tortured-genius pose. Westlake wrote across identities and genres, where keeping a file of stray observations is less precious than necessary. The line captures the true economy of writing: you bank small insights against a future you can’t quite predict, trusting that your later self will be smarter, or at least luckier, than your current one.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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