tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post7796028817574970042..comments2024-03-19T02:14:31.704-04:00Comments on <center>OnFiction</center>: The Problem of Not WritingKeith Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-62001462538709612862008-06-30T17:31:00.000-04:002008-06-30T17:31:00.000-04:00What an interesting idea, Lenze. I was thinking th...What an interesting idea, Lenze. I was thinking that, when we construct a plan in a voluntary kind of way, we assume we are in charge of it, so we are distressed when something seemingly involuntary occurs, and we don't do what we intended. But, on your proposal, our blocks occur when we do not imagine the future strongly enough, just as a novelist may fail to prompt us to imagine a story vividly enough. If we can imagine our plan really well, it pulls us along—is that it?—gives us the go to get going with it.Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-88583179375628978522008-06-29T13:22:00.000-04:002008-06-29T13:22:00.000-04:00Hmmm.... My feeling is that the block comes from a...Hmmm.... My feeling is that the block comes from a temporary inability to develop thoughts about the future. Or perhaps simply an inability to describe them. You suggest that I wrote, "a rather effective story" but my feeling is that what I wrote was an account about something that had happened rather than a story about something that had not yet happened. My 'block' then concerns my inability to invent the future rather than my ability to recount the past. Could this be described as the difference between a journalist and a writer. I agree that both of them "engage in writing behaviour" but there remains an essential difference in the essence of what they do. Perhaps.Lenze Willihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06131217606573682202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-66778325933412646582008-06-27T21:05:00.000-04:002008-06-27T21:05:00.000-04:00Thank you, Lenze, for this comment. You say you ar...Thank you, Lenze, for this comment. You say you are not a writer, but you then write a rather effective story about having an empty mind when you need to write something, and about feeling blank when you ought to be meeting a client. I think you are right: the "block" is a disruptive state, and it happens generally. I certainly find that. Does it come, perhaps, from being able to make plans, and then thinking that we are in charge of them?Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-35054504361192288262008-06-27T18:18:00.000-04:002008-06-27T18:18:00.000-04:00I am not a writer although I suffer from writer's ...I am not a writer although I suffer from writer's block. Although not a writer there are many things that I need to commit to paper, documents to produce and disseminate. These are invariably dry reports or recommendations coughed up for the commercial world. But in producing them I am often seized with an empty mind, I have no idea how I should begin, where I should take it and so on. This usually leads me to understand that it would help enormously if I left the PC and mowed the lawn for an hour or two. <BR/><BR/>I have also suffered badly from 'salesman's block". Periods when I quite sharply have no idea at all about how to find a potential customer, how to approach one, how to present the product, zilch. Instead I can only shy away from any attempt at work, and instead engage myself in various diversionary activities while still half-heartedly going through the motions of selling. But there is no feeling there, no power. A potential client would be embarrassed by my half-hearted, apologetic, hopeless routine, both of us aware that I am not persuading anyone to do anything. A block as effective and as real as writer's block. Is there any connection? Does the writer sell his ideas? Does the salesman tell a story? You could persuade me of this connection. Further, I think that we could find many more similar blocks that reflect the same issues. So can we think that this 'block', although more visible and coherent in the case of the writer, is in fact a disruptive state that occurs to the person in general. A condition where he is unable, for a period of time, to exercise something that he is normally master of? <BR/><BR/>That's all. <BR/><BR/>Lenze WilliLenze Willihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06131217606573682202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-20669273699119178092008-06-27T18:13:00.000-04:002008-06-27T18:13:00.000-04:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Lenze Willihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06131217606573682202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-62975828081713873872008-06-19T09:28:00.000-04:002008-06-19T09:28:00.000-04:00Thanks very much, Terry. I did not know about your...Thanks very much, Terry. I did not know about your website, on short stories: very interesting. We have added it to our list of sites.Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-75111142942803150322008-06-18T23:00:00.000-04:002008-06-18T23:00:00.000-04:00Good article.Thanks for sharing.Terry Finleyhttp:/...Good article.<BR/>Thanks for sharing.<BR/><BR/>Terry Finley<BR/><BR/>http://theterryfinleysite.blogspot.com/Terry Finleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10059419809921962023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-88116954348323197112008-06-18T22:36:00.000-04:002008-06-18T22:36:00.000-04:00I think you have hit on one of the factors with wh...I think you have hit on one of the factors with which we can measure the power of an artist (including writers): Picasso, for instance, had a greater capacity for feeling--a hypersensitivity, a dial tuned to a different channel. He was picking up hi-def emotions before hi-def existed. Ditto Plato, Shakespeare, Faulkner, others. <BR/><BR/>More pedestrian artists can describe those feelings we all have. The greats transcend normal emotions and give us something we couldn't find in life, which is why they are remembered.Justin Hammhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14960584050841295189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-13386296979792935182008-06-18T21:17:00.000-04:002008-06-18T21:17:00.000-04:00Thank you, j.d., for this comment. Your point is w...Thank you, j.d., for this comment. Your point is well taken. No doubt people in many occupations do torment their families and co-workers when they cannot do their jobs. And you are no-doubt right, also, that writers' states of not being able to write have become salient precisely because they write about them. Do you think perhaps that the dancer Martha Graham was correct when she said: “The difference between the artist and the non-artist is not the greater capacity for feeling. The secret is that the artist can objectify, can make apparent the feelings we all have” (cited by Howard Gardner, 1993, Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Graham, and Gandhi, p. 298)? Or is the only difference, as you suggest, that, like snails, we writers leave a trace behind us?Keith Oatleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16419339550879570935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5455277388900637928.post-61208267097019086072008-06-18T13:55:00.000-04:002008-06-18T13:55:00.000-04:00I understand your point and agree. To add: Teach...I understand your point and agree. To add: Teachers and lawyers hardly "suffer quietly without enshrining their inactivity in drama." <BR/><BR/>Like writers, they torment their coworkers, families, bosses, et cetera, with their drama because they cannot perform the duties of their calling. <BR/><BR/>The difference is a few writers have chosen to record their sufferings for perpetuity, so we are aware that they dramatize their suffering.Justin Hammhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14960584050841295189noreply@blogger.com