Can you have writer's block if you haven't even started writing? What if the question is how to begin writing? or where to begin? or what to begin writing about? Whenever this question arises in my mind, my answer is simple: start anywhere. Just think of something, anything, and start writing. This tactic can have surprising results, as evidenced by the author E. L. Doctorow:
Well it can be anything. It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall.... Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then; trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was President. One thing led to another and that's the way the book began, through desperation to those few images.
I also like Anne Lamott's advice:
Start with your childhood.... Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down.
I find this helpful in academic writing, too. I just start writing about whatever I find interesting about the subject matter, and before long a topic begins to form. The most important thing, as Anne Lamott points out, is not to worry about how "good" the writing is. I remind myself that I am not committed to the words on the page, that they are changeable and that I have that power. I try to remember that there will be time to revisit it later, to sort the good from the bad and to rewrite if necessary. I repeat my simple mantra, again and again each time my writing begins to slow: just keep writing. just write.
In a recent class we were discussing the best way to read a text, specifically one written two thousand years ago. In no time at all the conversation developed into one giant sex metaphor and stubbornly remained there for the rest of the class.
There is, of course, no pure way to read any text, especially one this far out of our own context. We must, therefore, attempt to penetrate the text in order to discover its meaning. Upon penetration we may further be able to procreate, developing a new text out of the meaning we extract.
What problems does this metaphor bring to the reading of a text? For one, the penetration metaphor specifically implies that the submissive partner, the text is feminine and the active, dominant partner, the reader is masculine. The implications of this are an entirely separate conversation, so I will simply point out that this metaphor can easily be feminized by the reader simply attempting to wrap her mind around the text.
The second, and I think most fully problematic implication of the metaphor asks whether all this penetration and procreation is appropriate. Are we in fact violating the purity of the text through our penetration of it? Plagiarism has long been metaphorically associated with rape (see the work of Rebecca M. Howard). This metaphor comes from the historical sense of rape as the theft of a possession (specifically that of a husband or father - again, another conversation completely). So does the reading of a text fit into a rape metaphor? Is the formulation of idea, the speculation of motive, the dissection of language all inappropriate use, indeed violation of a text?
I have to agree with one of the other graduate students in class who pointed out the difference between rape and not is consent. She argued that the penetration of the text would be inappropriate if it were not indeed consensual. However, isn't the very act of publishing a work offering it up for interpretation and yes, penetration by others? At the risk of further encouraging this metaphor, I can only conclude that text and reader do in fact have a mutual sexual relationship.
What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are also the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people, write. We write to escape our prisons. - Alice W. Flaherty
In the first chapter of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Flaherty draws the connection between mental illness and writing. She notes that studies have shown that "writers are ten times more likely to be manic-depressive than the rest of the population, and poets are a remarkable forty times more likely. Even student poets not diagnosed with mental illness have more manic traits than students who do not write poetry."
Importantly, Flaherty makes the distinction between these writers and those who write for outer gain, for recognition, for money, for success. Writers with mental illness write for themselves, to release what is within, to feel that they are being productive, or simply because they must. Isn't this why we should all be writing?
This, of course, does not mean that we need to have a mental illness in order to write. But reading this makes me want to look inside a little bit and search for signs of my inner manic.
The writing process. Now there's a topic. We all go about writing in different ways and as part of this we process the information that we are writing about in different ways. Some of us process it in our heads, but many, or perhaps most, of us have to process it in writing. This is what differentiates one-draft and multi-draft writers.
Here is Muriel Harris:
By one-draft writers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the pre-texts that carry out those plans as well as do all or most of the revision of those plans and pre-texts mentally, before transcribing. They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters have not arrived at this developmentally or as a result of training in writing, and they should not be confused with other writers who -- driven by deadlines, lack of motivation, insufficient experience with writing, or anxieties about "getting it right the first time" -- do little or no scratching out of what they have written.
Multi-drafters, on the other hand, need to interact with their transcriptions in order to revise. Independent of how much planning they do or pre-text they compose, they continue to revise after they have transcribed words onto paper. Again, true multi-drafters have not reached this stage developmentally or as a result of any intervention by teachers.
I find this explanation helpful, but I rather prefer Stephen Spender's terms. Janet Emig explains them well:
Spender divides artists, after their formidable ancestors, into Mozartians and Beethovians. The Mozartian is one who can instantaneously arrange encounters with his unconscious; he is one in whom the creative self leads a constant and uninterrupted life of its own, serene to surface disturbances, oblivious of full upper activity... The Mozartian can "plunge the greatest depths of his own experience by the tremendous effort of a moment" and surface every time with a finished pearl - a Cosi Fan Tutte, a Piano Concerto in C Major.
The Beethovian, on the other hand, is the agonizer, the evolutionizer. Scholars study his first notes to a quartet or a symphony, as Spender points out, are astounded by their embryonic clumsiness. The creative self in a Beethovian is not a plummeting diver, but a plodding miner who seems at time to scoop south with his bare hands. To change the metaphor, for the Beethovian, composing is not unlike eating an artichoke - pricks and inadequate rewards in our tedious leaf-by-leaf spiraling toward the delectable heart. I say our for how many of us can claim ourselves Mozartians?
To those who can compose completely in their minds and whip together an excellent first draft, bravo. As for the rest of us, those of us who are true Beethovians and those of us who fall somewhere in between, I say we embrace our multi-drafting tendencies. Make it work for us. Leave ourselves the time to work through draft after draft until we reach the heart of the artichoke.
I'm not sure that I believe in writer's block. It is, at the very least, an over-diagnosed affliction. You mean you can't produce an entire essay/novel/poem/whathaveyou off the top of your head at a moment's notice? How surprising.
I have come across far too much information on the subject to deal with at one time, so I'll start with a favorite. This is the introduction to "The Essential Delay: When Writer's Block Isn't" by Donald M. Murray:
Morison isn't writing. He's a professional writer, published and anthologized, but he's not writing. He goes to his typewriter and jumps up to find more paper. He organizes and reorganized his notes, makes a third cup of tea, visits the stationery store to buy a new pen, hunts through the library for that one elusive reference. He makes starts and notes and more notes and folders and outlines, but he does not produce a draft.
He wonders if he has writer's block. He clears writing time on his schedule, shuts the door to his study, and watches a tree grow. Slowly. He makes neat work plans, types them up, pins them above his desk, and doesn't follow them. He drafts letters - in his head - telling the editor he cannot deliver the piece. He considers going into real estate, or advertising, or becoming a hit person. He composes suicide notes - in his head - that are witty, ironic, publishable. He grumps at his wife and lies awake at night wondering if there is a treatment for writer's block.
But Morison knows he doesn't have writer's block. He's been writing for almost 40 years. He is passing through the normal, necessary, always terrifying delay that precedes effective writing.
Murray goes on to explain that this "essential delay" is just a period of waiting that writers must go through before they have collected all the necessary elements of writing. He identifies five of these elements: information, insight, order, voice, and of course, a feeling of need to write. These may seem simple enough but we should all know that they don't turn up overnight.
While Murray doesn't offer much in the way of a solution to this waiting game, I find it gratifying to know that my procrastination is not (necessarily) ill-spent. At least I know I'm not the only one.
Even literature junkies have their flaws. I, for one, hate reading Middle English (a la Chaucer) and Early Modern English (a la Shakespeare). It drives me crazy. Sadly, in addition to the great works of such masters as Chaucer and Shakespeare, much of Classical Literature, written in Latin and Greek, was translated during these eras. This is sad because, along with the Bible, these classical pieces have had some of the greatest influences on their literary successors. They are pieces that, if we can stand to read them, will bring great insight into literary work after literary work.
I, however, with the help of a great professor who is requiring the reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses at length, have found the solution. Find a modern translation. This may seem obvious, but I didn't realize that people were still translating this stuff.
A recommendation: Allen Mandelbaum. Among others, his translations include Inferno of Dante (1980) and The Odyssey of Homer (1990) and his 1972 translation of The Aeneid of Virgil won the National Book Award.
I am currently reading his 1993 translation of The Metamorphoses and it is brilliant. I'm no expert on the Classics myself, but according to my professor and the reviews, it is very accurate. In my opinion, it is beautifully written and, most importantly, it is completely readable.
According to the National Endowment for the Arts 2004 Reading at Risk Survey, personal writing was the ONLY literary activity that increased between 1982 and 2002.
The question of why we write is one that I will likely revisit often. There is a wealth of opinions out there and I can't seem to stop coming across them.
"The Artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived on thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since."
William Faulkner (The Paris Review Interviews 1956)
How many titles would the average person recognize but not be able to match with an author? Worse, how many stories would we recognize without even knowing so much as the title? So few writers are recognized. So few win awards. So few make any real money. Do the few who find success really even matter?"The more the public is interested in artists, the less it is interested in art. The personality of the artist is not a thing the public should know anything about. It is too accidental."
Oscar Wilde (Mr. Oscar Wilde on Mr. Oscar Wilde 1895)
So, unless you know that you have something to contribute, unless you are the successor of Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer and Faulkner, maybe there is no point in writing at all.
"But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward."
Anne Lamott (Introduction to Bird by Bird)
Well said.
I am on the lookout for inspiration.
When I read, I read with pencil in hand. I mark lines, record quotes, make note of thoughts. This is the training of a degree in English. But I've found that the pencil helps me process.
I have been looking for a way to record these inspirations. It is the notes that get lost. The marks stay in the books where I left them, but the recorded quotes, the thoughts and interpretations end up scattered. I've attempted notebooks, journals, lists. But the day I don't have the right notebook on hand is the day it falls apart.
It is possible that a collection of inspirations, instructions, quotes and thoughts would be interesting and useful to someone other than myself. So I'll share them. It will be a look at the writing process. The quotes of literary masters. The name of a good book. A new technique for learning. A helpful resource. An inspiring practice. An interesting fact. I will do my best to keep it relevant, interesting, insightful, meaningful. I hope it will be inspirational. For you and for myself.
These are the things I mark in pencil.
