Writer's Block

I've been reading in my usual desultory way lately, a very good book on Homer and the epic tradition by Jonathan Burgess (The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle) and many back issues of TLS, my window on the written world. And, having succumbed at last to Netflix, I've been regularly watching a heterogeneous collection of movies on DVD that I never found interesting enough to get me out to a movie theater, Neverland, Adaptation, The Village. But for most of this past month I've found myself unable to compose anything coherent to add to this blog. So I'm doing what I've always done, I'm writing about the fact that I have nothing to write about.

Of course, this only gets one so far. But once I sit myself down and start typing I can usually come up with something to fill a page. I've always found it easy, for example, to write to a deadline, especially when I've been given some assigned topic. But the fact is I have little original to offer from my own native wit. This, I submit, is the worst sort of writer's block, when you can write endless pages of something, almost anything, and yet recognize that it doesn't really amount to very much. I guess it's just typing. If you want to open a window on this particular phenomenon, I recommend the film Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey, Jr.

And so, having now contributed something more to my weblog, I feel better. Next time I'll try to push myself just a little further.