Most of a writer's decisions are unconscious. A stroke of paint here, a switch to a minor key there, the use of flaccid instead of soft. At this level, expression simply appears; it is expression expressing itself, images, ideas, states of mind and feeling being acted out, evoked, displayed. An idea appears, connects to another, a layer appears and then another - suddenly there is a leap, Ah-ha! Later, in revisions, with careful polishing, the impulsive choice is reconsidered, sometimes rejected - sometimes improved, tightened, expanded anew. So we go on, version to version, tweaking, shifting, hemming, primping. I don’t know how one knows the right word or the right tense, how exactly I know when a sentence needs two fewer or one more syllable. I can go on about rhythm and prosody, about mood and tone, but sometimes one just has to take the gifts the world gives us.