What does writing do?
All this makes me wonder about the ultimate capacity of the brain for work. People who write for a living know that writing is at least partly a physical act (my body temperature goes up when I’m working). At the same time, the role of the mind in writing is unpredictable, often weirdly so. I’ve always admired those businesslike novelists who rise early each weekday and hammer out a thousand words before lunch, but I’ve never been one of them: I start writing shortly before a piece is due, almost always at the last practicable moment. And while years of daily journalism long ago broke me of writer’s block, I frequently feel an aversion to the act of writing, a species of accidie that can be all but impossible to overcome. Is it a simple failure of will? Or might it be a signal from my mind that I’m not quite ready to start writing a piece and need to lay fallow a little while longer?
[x]#490 fan vrijdag 16 april 2004 @ 14:13:16
