What we tell ourselves when we avoid the page
I frequently hear something along these lines: “Even when I’m not writing, I’m writing”. The implication is often that writing consists of many moments — like reading, or even thinking about writing. I disagree with this idea. Writing is simply the act of sitting in front of a page and filling it with words. It’s a pretty straightforward affair, ergo why it’s so hard to get right. These other moments may contribute towards the writing — think of research, for example — but the writing gets done when you are actually writing, not any time else.
The above might sound a bit pop Zen, so let me explain better what I mean. Writing is a specific form of thinking — one that is determined by the tools you use. A laptop, pen and paper, a typewriter, your blood, the tears of whoever bankrolls your career — whatever you use to write ultimately shapes your outcome. In a way, we could say that writing is an intellectual-mechanical form of thinking. There are ideas that come to you when you are writing that wouldn’t occur to you when you are away from your tools. This is why my answer when someone complains about so-called writer’s block is always the same one: sit down and start writing. Anything; even a shopping list. I mean it.
Developing that faith in one’s ability to fill a page is one of the hardest things to learn in this craft. But once you’ve stubbornly cracked this, there’s no going back.
Overthinking it
If you hang around literary types you will have heard this at least once: “So, I want to write this book which is like this and that…” Ninety-nine percent of the time this ideal book won’t come to life.