I ordinarily don’t like to give advice on writing as I don’t believe I’ve attained the status as a philosopher, academic, or writer to speak with authority on these sorts of issues. I often think of myself as a sort of rogue, scoundrel, or hobo that wanders about at the margins of the academy without having really established myself in any way. In other words, I have a pretty low opinion of my work. Nonetheless, I do have some thoughts on how I cope with the struggle of writing. When it comes to writing I have all sorts of tics and phobias that make work a great challenge for me. In my core I am profoundly anti-authoritarian, suspicious of any groups, and resistant to any demands. This, I think, is a fractal like symptom that pervades every aspect of my life from very small things to very large things. Thus, for example, when I was in college and grad school, I would have to read the texts for a course a semester in advance because it was impossible for me to read texts if they were assigned. Something about the simple demand brings out my inner Lucifer, inciting me to defiance. Likewise, I find it intensely painful to fill out forms for the government or the college of any sort. Again, the demand. When it comes to writing I struggle to complete articles and conference presentations. Rather, I experience blog posts and email discussions as far more valuable and rewarding. In this regard, I feel a profound affinity and sympathy for Leibniz. Leibniz was a scribbler, a ltter writer. Even his massive New Essays on Human Understanding was a letter to Locke, abandoned when he died. Leibniz was gregarious and communicative, craving, it seems, talk above all else (let’s not forget he was also a diplomat). I ache for this as well. What is an article but a line on the CV that falls into oblivion, killing more trees along the way, never to be heard from again. What the hell are we doing in writing articles? There is something beautiful in the epistle and in many respects blogging is, as Mel put it to me recently, the new epistlary. Yet again, the issue surrounding conference papers and articles revolves around my loathing of demands. To get around this, I now trick myself, telling myself that I’m writing a blog post or email rather than an article or conference paper.
Setting these weird little ticks aside, the biggest issue I struggle with when it comes to writing is originality. Am I saying something original? Do I have something original to say? The pursuit of originality, I believe, is one of the most paralyzing things for writers and among the greatest impediments to writing. First, it’s important to note, I think, that the more you write, the more you will. This, of course, is a banal truism, which is part of why I like it as a maxim. The point isn’t simply that if you write more you are, by definition, writing more. Note the future tense in the maxim. There are two reasons that you will write more if you write more. The first is professional and institutional. It is imperative to get your stuff out there in some form or another. You might have the most brilliant ideas in human history since Aristotle, but if no one knows who you are nothing will come your way. By contrast, once you begin to get stuff out there writing opportunities snowball. Suddenly people are asking you for pieces here and there, for contributions to their journals and conferences, and so on. Writing issues more writing. This is true even of blog writing. When I think of people to contribute to conferences and edited collections, these people are usually people I’ve corresponded with or who have blogs that interest me. Had they not posted their random thoughts I wouldn’t have thought about them.
However, there is another reason that the more you write the more you will write. Writing is like kudzu. Kudzu is a vine common to the south that grows at about a foot a day. It’s a really amazing (and irksome!) plant. This is how it is with writing as well. Writing grows from writing. Writing produces the imperative to write more. This is because, as you write you discover new themes, new concepts, and things that need to be worked through. Like a growing crystal, writing expands. In my view, one of the biggest mistakes aspiring writers make lies in trying to write before you write. By this, I mean that many writers, myself included, try to have their ideas before they write their ideas. But things just don’t– at least for me –work this way. Now, of course, just as you need a seed to form a crystal in a supersaturated solution, you need a seed to start writing. However, the seed is not the idea. The idea is something that only comes into being in the process of writing. It is not something that is there prior to writing. The point is not to have the idea before you write, but to allow the idea to emerge in writing. And once you’ve produced a lot of chaff, you then get to the arduous work of polishing and organizing. In this regard, it is a necessity to write obsessively and all the time. This is where ideas are born, not before the act of writing.
The drive for originality is also a big impediment to writing. On the one hand, we suffer from a sort of transcendental illusion. We (or I) think to ourselves that if we have an idea it can’t possibly be original precisely because the idea is familiar to us. It is not new to us. But writing is not for us, but for others, whether those others be our own future selves or the self we are becoming in the act of writing (writing has the magical power to remake you) or for the others who might read our scratchings on bit of napkins. On the other hand, originality cannot be anticipated. If originality could be anticipated it wouldn’t be originality. Rather, originality follows the logic of Lacan’s tuche or chance encounter. Originality is something that occasionally takes place, but if it does take place it can only be known as having had taken place, it can never be experienced in the moment. We only ever know that originality has taken place retroactively. As a consequence, it’s important to surrender the desire to anticipate originality so as to clear a space in which the event or chance occurrence of originality might take place.
Finally, I believe it is incredibly important to make ourselves uncomfortable if we wish to write. There’s a way in which scholarship, expertise with respect to a particular thinker or field, is the kiss of death for writing. We become so familiar with our area of expertise that the will to write dries up and disappears. Consequently, one strategy for producing writing lies, for me, in encountering the unfamiliar. If I’ve been spending too much time with the phenomenologists for a year or so, I should throw myself into the study of some branch of mathematics, or the investigation of some period of history, or into an engagement with biologists like Stephen J. Gould. An encounter with the unfamiliar, with alterity, generates an unassimialable kernel with respect to what I had previously been focusing on. That kernel functions as a seed to throw thought in motion, generate new conceptual spaces, form a weave of relations to make sense of these disparate worlds, thereby generating the work of writing.
October 20, 2010 at 8:56 pm
[…] recent post on why writing more means you will write more has sparked off a few things I’d like to […]
October 21, 2010 at 2:35 am
Totally agree with both points. I have a kind of mental post-it note stuck to the inside of my head that says “Stop thinking! You will find in the writing…” (or, when just waking up or falling asleep). And reading outside one’s comfort zone is also essential for keeping the mind fresh and (fruitfully) off-balance – i.e. in the way it needs to be, to write. (Which is why I read blogs like yours, incidentally, I have no philosophy background…)
October 21, 2010 at 3:57 am
Man this rocks.
October 21, 2010 at 3:58 am
http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2010/10/levi-nails-it-on-writing.html
October 21, 2010 at 9:58 am
Levi:
Sound advice – I’d also add (expanding on your point here) to make sure you read before you write. Not just one subject, but many. Not just non-fiction but fiction and vice versa.
Regarding kudzu, I developed a particular love of this weed while living in Knoxville, TN for a few years of my life. I can’t imagine what east Tennessee would look like in the Summer without the green carpet!:)
“I often think of myself as a sort of rogue, scoundrel, or hobo that wanders about at the margins of the academy without having really established myself in any way.”
Ha, I swing from this sort of self-denigrating belief to moments of insane arrogance when I am very briefly convinced that I am the single most important person in the multiverse. The latter states don’t last very long, however. :)
And unlike you, I don’t even have the connection with a university to make a claim for justification of my relevance – I just have my consultancy business and whatever books I have been able to shoehorn into the publishing monster’s cracks. I am always stunned at the number of digital game academics who are keen to work with me, because me own work in the field frequently feels utterly trivial to me… I think perhaps we are always dreadful at judging our own work.
“…the biggest issue I struggle with when it comes to writing is originality. Am I saying something original? Do I have something original to say? The pursuit of originality, I believe, is one of the most paralyzing things for writers and among the greatest impediments to writing.”
I had an experience this year which totally cured me of this, at it had been a bugbear for me too. I started reading Mary Midgley’s philosophy this Spring and quickly discovered that on a good dozen topics which I thought I was being thoroughly novel, she had already discussed the matters with wit and insight some thirty years before me. It was a jaw-dropping experience for me.
Now it used to be, as a game designer, that when someone implemented a game feature I had been designing on paper that I was annoyed. “That’s my idea!” I would grumble sulkily. But after the Midgley experience I have totally got over this idea that we own ideas. This is total ego.
We don’t own ideas – there’s no place to write in your name on an idea – we participate in discourses. And the value of the discourse is categorically not dependent upon whether it is coming up for the first time, but upon who encounters it, is changed by it, influenced by it, and what in turn they do with it.
I don’t think we get to appreciate our significance in life, because it cannot be seen from ‘the ground’, and we tend to evaluate ourselves on criteria of our own devising – which may or may not have anything to do with our worth in the community at large. Besides, a great many writers who are later deemed significant had no conception of their worth during their life. You just can’t tell from that close in.
My advice to you, such as it is, would be to remember that it is better to say something well than to say it first. Work on the craft of writing instead of worrying about originality and novelty.
Once again, forgive my verbosity – I haven’t the time to make this comment any shorter. :)
Chris.
October 21, 2010 at 11:35 am
“I often think of myself as a sort of rogue, scoundrel, or hobo that wanders about at the margins of the academy without having really established myself in any way.”
That’s got to be your next book: Hobo Philosophy!
October 21, 2010 at 8:08 pm
[…] we have A HILARIOUS AND USEFUL POST BY LEVI, filled with a mixture of self-deprecating humor, shrewd self-analysis, and -despite himself- sound […]
October 22, 2010 at 4:08 am
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October 22, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Thank you for that L.S. I have had similar problems. Whe I write, it is for an evil, invisible committee in my head. Allow me to introduce them:
http://thepeopleslaundry.blogspot.com/2010/07/literature-and-evil.html?zx=a4cd2cba48eb0ea4
October 22, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Stupendous! Kudos to you, and thanks for teaching us how to kick ourselves into optimal writing shape with this technique!
October 22, 2010 at 5:57 pm
“Finally, I believe it is incredibly important to make ourselves uncomfortable if we wish to write. There’s a way in which scholarship, expertise with respect to a particular thinker or field, is the kiss of death for writing. We become so familiar with our area of expertise that the will to write dries up and disappears.”
Totally disagree with this. That expertise is the key to originality. The more deeply you get into something, the more original you can be.
October 22, 2010 at 6:17 pm
You’re absolutely right Johnathan, as is clearly demonstrated by the content of professional journals. After all, Freud’s forays into archeology, neurology, hypnotism, and philosophy had nothing to do with the originality of his theories. That originality arose from his deep engagement with the psychology of his time.
October 22, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Can’t agree with Johnathan: I’m too familiar with the phenomenon Levy describes. One thing I would add, though: In addition to making oneself “uncomfortable” by getting into different exercises of the symbol-manipulator (is this “uncomfortable” because it is insufficient?), I also would suggest martial arts, spelunking, and sea kayaking. Many recommend rock-climbing as well, but I get vertigo. You can be a much more relaxed and comfortable scholar if the life force that’s supposed to express itself through striated muscle isn’t getting toxically redirected to stagnate in the viscera by a lot of thinking, writing and talking with not much doing to balance it.
October 22, 2010 at 7:52 pm
The best way to start a conversation on the internet:
“Totally disagree with this.”
Also good are: “You’re completely wrong,” “what were you thinking?” and “you’re an idiot.”
Ah, the internet.
October 22, 2010 at 10:59 pm
A counterexample might be interesting. Are there philosophers who were deeply committed members of a school for extended periods of time, published lots of stuff in journals specific to that school or exegesis of that school’s founding Thinker, etc., and then took it in a massively original new direction later? It seems like there must be at least one, even if it’s uncommon.
October 23, 2010 at 12:05 am
I’m sure there are counter-examples, however I do find that it is generally true that those who focus exclusively on scholarship restricted to their field do the least original work. Darwin’s encounter with Malthus comes to mind as a good example of cross-fertilization that produces originality. Kant’s encounter with Hume would be another. Had he continued in his focus on Wolffeian and Leibnizian metaphysics it’s unlikely he would have done anything notable. Despite my great love of phenomenology, I think the romantic tendency of many phenomenologists to denounce the sciences, technology, and mathematics is extremely unhealthy. Such denunciation is already built into Husserl’s critique of the natural attitude. The problem with this sort of hostility is that it diminishes the likelihood of aberrant encounters that generate innovation. Kuhn’s distinction between normal science and revolutionary science also comes to mind. The outsider scientist is often someone that brings something new to a science from a different discipline, like Darwin bringing the loathsome Malthus into biology, thereby transforming the practice of biology of as taxonomy. Additionally, Darwin brought in a good deal from geology.
October 23, 2010 at 12:14 am
Or, put differently, original thought doesn’t generally arise from saturating yourself entirely with the conventional thought of your discipline. Expertise in any discipline is a must, but it’s unhealthy to wrap yourself entirely in your discipline foreclosing encounters with other disciplines and practices. I’m sure this happens in the sciences as well, but I often encounter a sort of smug arrogance that borders on self-willed ignorance. Thus it’s not unusual to encounter Lacanians who speak as if they have nothing to learn from biology and neurology. Indeed, they often speak as if these fields are a priori mistaken, as if only dupes would ever do this sort of research. Likewise, among many phenomenologists it’s not unusual to encounter a deep romantic hostility to the sciences and mathematics, as if these things are the height of ignorance borne of the natural attitude. And across the board there’s a disdain of engineers and those who do hands on work, repeating Plato’s and Aristotle’s contempt for manual labor and materiality as if it has nothing to teach us about reality.
October 23, 2010 at 3:47 am
[…] If you are the writerly Bat Terrier type, see in particular his post, You Can’t Write Before You Write. […]
October 23, 2010 at 7:55 am
Yeah, I agree. Whenever I try to think of examples, I think of only almost-examples that turned out much better. For example, Harman is an almost-example: he was apparently a committed Heideggerian for years, and managed to go full-fledged into that milieu and come out the other side something quite original. It’s not entirely clear what the reasons for that were; did he encounter something novel that turned him in a new direction, or just started going in a new direction of his own accord? Either way, he’s only an almost-example, because we can imagine a dystopian alternate-world Harman who became a well-respected Heideggerian professor, publishing important commentaries and expositions, perhaps even becoming the leading Heidegger expert in the world. Would that person, twenty years hence, make a radically original turn? Seems unlikely.
I’m mostly a computer scientist myself, so I obviously agree that some of the humanities attitudes towards the sciences are a bit unpleasant (at least, I don’t like being on the receiving side of what appears to me as condescension). In a grass-always-greener sort of way, though, I often wish for a little more of the other side. Some corners of the sciences and engineering have a sort of fundamentalist view that there are exactly three legitimate things one can do: prove a theorem, conduct an experiment, or build something. And there’s a sort of mirror-image of the condescension towards the other side, which views the humanities as nothing but an unrigorous talking shop.
It’s true more in some places than others (e.g. theoretical physics is actually pretty big on thought experiments), but sometimes I wish for a bit more acceptance than an argument is actually a legitimate thing. Occasionally a good argument is even better than an experiment– why survey 30 freshmen and calculate a p-value to “prove” to me that A is better than B, when you can marshall your own critical faculties and actually explain to me why, instead?
Not that this is really disagreement; I don’t see you as arguing that philosophy journals should just be replaced by IEEE journals and all would be well.
October 23, 2010 at 8:45 am
There’s an interesting tension in this approach to writing. On the one hand it’s the philosophy of a self-deprecating, anti-authoritarian “hobo”; and on the other hand it aspires to the originality of a Freud or Kant.
I don’t think we can simulate Freud’s genius by broad reading; and I don’t think Freud came up with his stuff by intentionally reading beyond his comfort zone. I think the opposite is true: his genius saved him when he got out of his depth. Indeed, I think Freud’s scholarship leaves a great deal to be desired. (He got Hamlet totally wrong. And he misread simple plot elements in The Sandman.) Freud’s originality came from somewhere else and you’re right to say that we’ll only know retrospectively whether our ideas are coming from the same place.
Too strong an identification with “great minds” coupled with a disrespect for contemporary authorities (like that of the professional journals) is, in fact, “the kiss of death”, for many young academics. They forget that their heroes also had an apprenticeship, and therefore a very deep respect for authority. They recognized the expertise of the living masters of their tradition before they made their major contributions. And they sought those masters out to learn from them. They studied “under” an authority.
This is an important conversation. I hope you don’t see my, I suppose, somewhat total disagreement as equivalent to calling you an idiot (as Joseph Goodson seems to think it is, #14). I used to see myself much the way you describe yourself. But I have come to see academic writing very differently over the past few years of working with a broad range of authors at all levels of the university.
I’m afraid the advice you offer here will make life less comfortable than necessary for some people. If they follow it, of course.
October 23, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Mark, In the the case of Harman I would look less at his engagement with Heidegger than his engagement with thinkers like Zubiri, Ortega y Gassett, Latour, Lovecraft, etc. Part of Harman’s originality lies in his engagement with very marginal thinkers in the history of philosophy.
Thomas, you seem to be under the impression that I’m suggesting that we should abandon scholarship altogether. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with my own scholarly work. As someone who has done fairly well recognized scholarship– I’d direct you to my book on Deleuze –I’m not exactly speaking out of the blue, nor am I some young, idealistic upstart as you patronizingly suggest. Your remarks are curious however, as I explicitly call for care scholarly work. I merely make the case that we should expose ourselves to things outside our own fields of expertise and that such exposure helps to promote original work. Academic scholarships, for the most part, while absolutely necessary, is structured to reproduce itself as largely the same with only minor variations. In other words, it’s structured to minimize innovation. This arises from how journal and conference papers are selected, how graduate students are taught and mentored, and how dissertations are directed. This is also why most journal articles are doomed never ro be read. They are noise in the sense that they are saying what is already commonly said throughout the field.
I end with an aphorism: it’s difficult to persuade a man to believe something when his livelihood depends on not believing it.
October 23, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Hi Mark, I don’t think I said or suggested any of those things, but I apologize if my comment sounded patronizing. It’s true that I’m not very familiar with your work, but it is not true that I said anything negative about it. The young upstarts I may have been implicitly addressing are among our shared readership here in the blogosphere. If I thought of you as one I don’t think I would have commented (certainly not so directly).
I said Freud’s scholarly strategies can’t be the basis of his originality and greatness because he gets so many things (in terms of his reading) so plainly wrong. So Freud must have had something other than wide reading outside his comfort zone going for him, something like innate intelligence and sensitivity to the human condition, etc. I suspect your success as a scholar is based on similar talents, not your reading strategies. That’s all I meant.
I think we simply disagree about what a good attitude for writing is. Your approach, as you suggest, makes writing for journals and conferences sort of a pain in the ass. While my approach, which respects the limited but precise accomplishment that a journal article can be, makes enjoyable, productive work of it. I sense a certain measure of ressentiment in your approach, and that may be good energy for you. It’s just that there are other approaches. And I’m trying to suggest those alternatives to your readers who may find more joy in doing the thing that the careers will willy-nilly demand that they do.
Lastly, I should say that we agree about the sorry state of the journal literature (even though I imagine we read different journals). I’m just not sure that people who write with my attitude are to blame for it any more or any less than people who write with your attitude. There’s lots of doomed-to-be-unread work being done by people who can’t stand the “authority” and “demands” of journals (but publish there anyway) and who read beyond their familiar territory. There is as much noise being produced by eclectic, interdisciplinary delirium as by boring, overly cautious puzzling.
Anyway, here’s hoping that the discussion about how to relate to the “demands” of academic “disciplines” can continue. I’ll have something more detailed up on my blog later next week. Of course, if your livelihood depends on your beliefs about academic writing then, you’re right, that’s going to make the conversation a bit difficult.
October 23, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Sorry about that. I meant “Hi, Levi” of course. That slip isn’t even interestingly Freudian!
October 25, 2010 at 7:02 am
Hi again, Levi. I started writing on this topic already this morning. I’m probably not doing your remarks justice in this first post, but I hope to reach some common ground by the end of the week. Looking forward to your comments, if you feel like it. Best, Thomas.
November 11, 2010 at 11:16 am
Levi,
I would like to ask how you conceive of the difference between the demand to write, and the request to write. The former is seemingly paralyzing to you, but the latter feels inviting it seems. Reading assignments or papers feel like a burden, but when they ask you to write you feel compelled to do it.
It probably has to do with the idea of the demands behind the demand. To write a paper on Aristotle’s ethics is never just that; it is to write a paper about Aristotle’s ethics that conforms to what people expect of an A+ paper. You feel thus bombarded not just about the urgency to be original, but even more horribly, afraid to take risks and say things bluntly. On the other hand, when someone requests something from you it is usually because they are already familiar with your thought and work, and you know they are receptive to it. So you feel confident in communicating more of it, since you feel you have an audience as opposed to a critic. And of course when the interlocutor poses a reply, one feels even more compelled to answer.
This is all extremely trite and probably obvious, but i’m wondering if any of this resonates with you. I empathize heavily with your distaste for demand; which is why most of what I do comes usually from moments of my own will, or from replying to what others ask/rebut from me.
Hope all is well!
November 21, 2010 at 11:21 am
Yes, yes, yes. This relates to my work very much. I’m a painter, and an art professor. In my art work and in the classroom I have found that two of the most important things that peel away the veneer of imposed, shallow “ideas” to get to the actual idea is by painting (not planning to paint) or by using alternative materials, literally. Take paint away, work with collage, or found materials… and suddenly something has a chance to shift enough so that the truth can come through. Will this make for great art? Not necessarily… but at least the person making it is not deluding themselves anymore. Perhaps it’s analogous to psychoanalysis. When you start talking and talking and then your analyst says something back to you, maybe a fragment… to me that’s not that different from making a painting. I start doing the painting. The image emerges. I start messing with it. Then I see something else there. Only then. So the picture starts to change, and something else has that chance to emerge.
July 14, 2011 at 12:56 pm
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December 28, 2011 at 3:08 am
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