Something new – “On Writers” – wip
“On Writers”
[A journey … or Relativity, if an image from Escher were words]
“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”
Franz Kafka, July 1922
1.
For writers… What do you do when there’s nothing to write? No source, no inspiration, no material – How do you take pen in hand? push your fingers over the keys? speak to the darkness of lost ideas?
What makes a writer a writer? Not the act of writing – surely. Anyone can be a writer, but that doesn’t make a writer. Must be something more – something that defies time and stacks of drafts or so-called finished works.
Is it finished works that determines a writer? Publications? Years of practice – of doing? Name recognition? Controversy? Silence? Whispers in shadow or screams in light? None of these completely satisfy the determination of the what or who.
And… Why should any one thing define me? Kafka says “monster” when it’s not happening, but if that’s the case, then the monster is already there, has always been there – waiting. Waiting for a hush, a pause, for stillness, for the frozen will of panic. I must be greater than the sum of my tenuous parts– A question, not a statement. A prayer, not an answer.
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