The Royal Road to Writer's Block

I'm worried that something I said in yesterday's Plain Sight might spread bad writing rather than make it easier for people to write well. I'd like to qualify my remark...

Yesterday I ran a quote from Proust (at long last I am reading my Proust) about writer's block. It was typically long-winded yet utterly coherent, truthful and funny. Look at yesterday's PS if you want to read it.

The point of the quote was that aiming for perfection can freeze a writer in his tracks. At which point I said that self-consciousness is the royal road to writer's block.

But I want to back off of that, because a certain kind of "self-consciousness" is essential. Not the awareness of one's own ambitions--that's fine, within reason--but an awareness that there is a reader out there (one hopes) who needs to be led lovingly by the hand, who needs to have a clear path spread before him with no pitfalls, quicksand, ambiguous turns in the road, dead ends, impassable brambles, and so forth. Any writer who does not constantly worry about the reader's comfort and well-being will soon find himself (or herself) without any readers.

Because writing may begin with talking to one's self, but it can never end there. You're talking to someone who is not inside your head, hasn't experienced what you have experienced, and won't necessarily follow your train of thought unless you take care to assemble one, car by car, and set it on a track that proceeds logically from a beginning to a middle to an end.

That requires a certain kind of self-consciousness, or perhaps I mean other-consciousness. Or, to change the metaphor, if a piece of writing is an automobile, make sure it comes with nav. It needs GPS, so that no matter how many twists and turns in the route, the reader always knows where he(she) is and where the thing is going.

Location of today's picture, by the way: Great Barrington, Mass.

Relevance of today's picture to today's rant: Umm, something about transparency.

See you tomorrow.

Tags: photography | writing