I think that what SRD says about visualization vs verbalization is probably true for most writing, from both directions: writer and reader. The process of creative writing is the act of trying to express something that is nebulous and nascent, something that isn't fully developed or clear. It never starts out fully explicit and clearly formed. The process of writing (and more importantly,
revising,) is the phenomenon which achieves explication, fullness, and clarity. This is why so many writers describe the story as seemingly "writing itself" or the process as one of "discovery" vs "invention." It rarely starts as a fully-formed image or even a fully-formed idea. The process of writing necessarily involves the process of reading, of confronting the product of one's craft as an object. The writer can't help being affected by his own words. Even though he is their source, he also stands in relation to them as an observer. During the revision stage, the writer can read his own work and compare its effect against the nebulous, nascent intention, and see how well they "match up," and then refine the result accordingly. The end product is built up from a feedback loop of creating/observing/creating/observing.
Perhaps this is the main reason why he says he's not "transcribing" into words an already formed mental image. The image comes later--for both the writer and the reader--as a product of being
affected by words. Few of us ever carry around in our heads fully articulated images of imaginary places or objects. Our conscious minds are not good at inventing these from scratch [though, curiously, our subconscious minds are VERY good at doing this while we're asleep and dreaming]. While awake, our conscious minds need "guidance," almost like guided meditation. And this guidance comes in the form of words ... structural stepping stones for us to follow in building up a joint imagining.
It really is magical. String together a few words and you can jointly build "structures" that only exist in the imagination ... structures both elusive, immaterial, flowing, and yet strangely permanent like
the water ballroom of the Viles' caverns.
Words have the power to evoke images not because of their one-to-one relationship with specific parts of potential images, but because of the intermediary concepts/feelings/intentions that bind words to sensual experiences. Words evoke the feelings that we have learned to associate with sensory experiences, and then those feelings or intentions evoke our own personal versions of the attendant images. Kind of like the synesthetic magic of the Viles, where senses are transposed upon one another ... words and feelings and intentions stand in place of sights and sounds.
Joe Biden … putting the Dem in dementia since (at least) 2020.