Abstraction is wisdom for a writer - the metamorphosis of knowledge into poetry. Water dripping from trees transforms into a metaphor for weeping, and the willow's long, emotional tresses make it the somberest of trees. Without abstraction, clouds stay as only-clouds; sunsets are simply light passing beneath the horizon, eight minutes old; magic is poorly explained science; and love is a collection of complicated hormones and obfuscated neural connections.
Abstraction separates the mind from the historical algorithm. Show a computer a bicycle, then a different picture of a different bicycle, and the base composition of pixels, hues, saturations, and even backdrops prevent the computer from understanding both objects as the same, though any three-year-old child instantly grasps the connection, though his feet aren't ready for the pedaling. Tell a computer: "time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas", and logical paradox, or ask it to divine by zero, and computer's reply with explosive incomprehension. But dividing by zero, that's as wide as the universe, and logical paradox is another weapon of the proficient storyteller.
BW has it down, but perhaps that's what separates the bestseller from the novice blogger. You can understand persons, and really know, love, and care for persons, but unless you know people, your writing scope is limited. An author must know everything, so each facet of reality may face its abstraction and carve light into a prism of possibilities.
when the wind of many bites your eyes,
and the sea-spray-gray surges
up the beach to clasp at your ankles,
while the blinding sand stings and fleas
gnaw at your knees for a little respite -
surrounded on all sides, an island sinking
in a sea of hungry eyes -
though I hear the starving shriek of storm
pounding at the windows with its tears,
I'm in a corner, pooled in a blanket of quiet
denial and puzzle pieces, wondering whether
they're even all there, or the picture matches
the box, or even if the night cares.
and time is tired, but smiling, and by my watch
trying to tell me something.
I'm climbing trees, ophelia, look
I've found pretty stones, virginia,
so why are you crying?
is it because you could not stop for anything, emily?
collige virga rosas, do not drop them
in a hurry down the styx
the wildflowers only transform hillsides
after a long and frozen winter
all our names are writ as keats'
but it's elegant, look, watch the ocean breathe
watch the storm sing
and watch the dervish dance of the sands
in a world whimpering
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