Writer’s Block
I hate writer’s block. I know, I know: Who doesn’t? But writing about writer’s block is like what Virginia Woolf said about describing pain.
The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare, Donne, Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.
There’s no easy language for it.
I’ve been sitting here, in front of the computer, for weeks, trying to get going on this next section of the Thomas book. Just one false start after another. Every sentence falls flat, every paragraph is dead on arrival. And those are the good days.
When the writing is happening, there are few things better. When it’s not…you get posts about how it’s not happening.
Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about writing that flies and writing that flails. Maybe because I’m reading so many Supreme Court cases and law review articles.
There is writing that has attack: I don’t mean it’s polemical. It just moves. Every sentence says something, every paragraph advances the position. For a good example, read anything by Doug Henwood. His writing flies. As do the opinions of Clarence Thomas.
Then there is writing that dawdles. It goes nowhere or takes forever to get there. And not in a good way. As Nietzsche said of a group of French writers (including Flaubert!), “Fundamentally they all lack the main thing—’la force.’” He was talking about the writers more than the writing, but the point still applies. For a good example of writing without la force, read the opinions of Lewis Powell.
Needless to say, I dislike the latter kind of writing, and try to avoid it.
But here’s the concern: Like all writers, I’m always filling in the blanks of my own writing. I extract from the noise in my head a faux-logic, coherence, and force, and then ascribe to my sentences that assemblage of logic, coherence, and force, an assemblage that is simply not there. Call it the writer’s mode of import-substitution. Only in reverse.
So, how can you tell if the attack you hope is there is really there?
Lapses in logic and coherence are easy enough, with time, to identify.
La force? She is harder.