Sunday 17 May 2015

Writing

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
Ernest Hemingway
Yeah, right.


It has been almost a year now since I began "research" in philosophy, towards writing a thesis. The R-word has ever since been constantly evading me.

For months now, as I sit down to right, nothing happens. It's like a constipated straining. I try to squeeze out the last drops of the literary teabag by winding the string around, and I get the bitter theanine aftertaste. Like old coffee dregs at the bottom of the pot.

It is anguish to consider that perhaps until a year or two back, I would have struck a chord with Hemingway. Words, sentences, and verses used to bleed.

They're all but choked now, and this ain't no writers block.

It started as a skeptical attack of every word that I typed. What meaning did it have? To what end did it serve? It sounds beautiful, but isn't it too patriarchal? It went on, leading me away from verse close to the heart, and towards reasoned propositions, and conclusions that hung on the premises. Slowly the cancer spread to stem the bleed. And incapacitatedly, I realised that carefully inferred arguments could only take you so far, even in the matters of reason.

Today, I ask, is this clot a denouement, or is it a rising action? Could I hope for a peripeteia?

V was kind enough to point me to a post on how to write, written for students of philosophy, by a early career philosopher. The post has gotten me nodding, and encouraged to pick up a few hints. I hope to experiment, and I shall report the results of my experiment. Until then, ciao.