Different from popular belief, we do not usually think in the words and sentences of ordinary language but in symbols for ideas (known as “mentalese”), and writing our ideas down is an act of translation from that symbolic language. But while mentalese contains our thoughts in the form of a complex tapestry (织锦)，writing can only be composed one thread at a time .Therefore it should not be surprising that our first attempt at expressing ideas should look so simple. It is only by repeatedly rewriting that we produce new threads and connect them to get closer to the ideas formed in our minds.

和我们普遍的认识不同之处在于：我们的思维通常不用普通语言的单词和句子来表现的，而是用符号来表达其思想（称之为“心理语言”）我们记录自己思想的过程就是一个将这种符号语言转换的过程。如果说心理语言就像一块复杂的织锦那样包容着我们的思想，那么编写工作就只能一次在一根线上进行。因此，我们第一次尝试表达思想竟会如此容易也就不足为怪了。正是通过这种不断复写的过程，我们才能将刚刚产生的一条条思维织线组织起来以便更接近于我们脑海中形成的种种思想。