Answer #134 - That and the voices. Oh, the voices.

From Kafka's diaries - on bad writing. The best description I've read of a failed writing session. 


My feeling when I write something that is wrong might be depicted as follows:  

In front of two holes in the ground a man is waiting for something to appear that can rise up only out of the hole on his right.

But while this hole remains covered over by a dimly visible lid, one thing after another rises up out of the hole on his left, keeps trying to attract his attention, and in the end succeeds in doing this without any difficulty because of its swelling size, which, much as the man may try to prevent it, finally covers up even the right hole.

But the man - he does not want to leave this place, and indeed refuses to at any price - has nothing but these appearances, and although - fleeting as they are, their strength is used up by their merely appearing - they cannot satisfy him, he still strives, whenever out of weakness they arrested in their rising up, to drive them up and scatter them into the air if only he can thus bring up others; for the permanent sight of one is unbearable, and moreover, he continues to hope that after the false appearances have been exhausted, the true will finally appear.

For my own purposes, in those times when inspiration is met with handfuls of nothing, I keep a file on my laptop called 'bullshit.' Every once in a while, I go back to it and grab a piece of something that floated up out of the hole on the left and snap into a piece of something that fleetingly floated up out of the hole on the right.

And you wonder why writer's drink?  Always standing around, watching holes in the ground, praying for something or another to float up?