Tuesday, July 08, 2008
(12:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Tuesday Hatred: Writer's Block
I hate writer's block. Thankfully I don't get it too terribly often, but when it happens, it doesn't seem to come from not knowing what to say, but rather from not knowing what order to say it in.On the chapter I'm working on, I had a situation that was very closely parallel to a chapter from my Zizek book. I knew that I had X number of things to cover in the chapter (or the remainder thereof, in the current case), but one didn't seem to fit neatly, so I initially decided to put it first just to get it out of the way. All my attempts to follow through on this plan failed -- in the case of the Zizek book, I started the relevant section probably six or seven times and could never find any momentum, and in the present case, I just didn't try to write anything at all.
Cycling through other possible orders, I found many that seemed to work, but all of them excluded this troublesome part altogether, which was not an acceptable solution. Finally, in both cases, I had a sudden insight into a structure that would tie all the required parts together with a deep inner necessity -- and it was absolutely crucial that I put the previously out of place part first if my argument was to make any sense at all. I hate that my life so often seems to be pulled directly from Hegel.
I hate that I haven't been able to follow through on not caring about traffic stats for AUFS, as the original concept of the blog required. I hate having a blog whose title is difficult to type.
I hate being the only person in a subway station. I hate how much of a spendthrift I've been in the last few months.
Interested readers will find this post's evil twin, the Tuesday Love, at this blog.
