Process

When I was in grad school there was much heated debate about the process of writing. Or, more succinctly, Process.


These self-important and masturbatory conversations usually centered around the physical process of placing words on paper.


Keyboard, pen, pencil, tape recorder, hammer and chisel, crayon...


Computer monitor, legal pad, lined white paper, cocktail napkins...


While I wanted to discuss mental and emotional aspects of Process everyone else seemed caught up in the minutiae (and pretense) of what mechanical tools were being used, as if somehow the 'magic' was not in your head but in the material objects used to record it.

I often wondered (and still do) whether this avoidance was due to a serious interest in the physical act of writing or a serious lack of consideration about motivation.

People would tell me the more they thought about writing the more they became blocked.

Blocked?

What are these people? Toilets?

That's like saying the more they thought about food the less hungry they'd become Or the more they thought about sex the more impotent they became.

The old saying goes that writers write. I believe that writing is not so much a physical act as it is a form of thinking out loud. When people think of writers (and of course I'm speaking in general terms) they don't think of someone who is physically capable, they think of someone who is "smart" (and boy is that a mistake).

So while others discuss pen vs laptop or PC vs. Mac (as if the brand actually matters) I'll turn my attention inward. And see what I can dig up from the deep (and maybe not so deep) recesses of my consciousness.