There are days when writing refuses to happen. This is different from having an empty head. If no thought comes to mind, waiting will eventually let thought rise slowly, like a magician lifting a person hidden under a blanket. There is no real problem. If I look more at nature, listen to music, look around, and then quietly watch inside myself, idle thoughts comparing past and present, years ago and weeks ago, naturally appear. If I do not try to write a great work by some great author, but simply think of moving stray thoughts into writing, there is always plenty to write. Any stray thought, if followed closely, flows somewhere, like the stream of consciousness. At first the parts may seem unrelated, but as I write and follow slowly, the focus gradually sharpens like turning a camera lens.
But days when writing refuses are different. Thought is not absent. It still stirs, but from the very beginning it cannot be changed into sentences. It is not a state of having nothing to write; it is a state of not being able to write. There is no method. I treat it like a slump, though it may not be one, and exercise harder, doodle, or write something truly useless. Useless writing works surprisingly well. By useless I do not mean meaningless syllables. I mean writing things with content but no thought: “My desk is white. On it are a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. My phone charger is wireless, white and round, and a blue light turns on while charging.” It is letting what enters through the eyes flow straight through the hand without thought or worry. It is not practice; it is a device for not losing the pleasure of writing.
I do not know the principle, but usually this lets me write again.
There is one cause behind the problem. Not every time, but often I cannot write because of comparison. Whatever the cause, mechanical writing removes the conscious pressure pressing down on thought and solves the immediate problem. Its weakness is that it lasts only then, so I cannot predict when the feeling will return. Still, having found one cause should reduce the frequency.
Comparison.
Perhaps it was embodied from childhood, when grades were compared with classmates or with the sons and daughters of my mother’s acquaintances. Perhaps it came from calculating class rank. In any case, comparison seems to have become automatic. I rarely make direct comparisons consciously, and such talk does not bother me, so I thought it had nothing to do with me. Now I see that it happens deeper down. Even without placing two written pieces side by side, I seem able to compare in real time. If I read something and think, “I want to write something like this,” the very first thought about my own writing begins as, “How should I express this kind of thought in that way?” Even if I ignore it somewhat, when I actually write I think, “If I go this way, it will become very different from that text.”
Comparison is not aimed at two existing pieces. It sets one sample and judges the process of my writing against it. Before the writing is even born, at the instant it is about to be written, comparison blocks it from birth. I cannot avoid reading other people’s writing to prevent this. And it is not limited to others. If I read my own piece and think, “This suits my style,” I begin worrying from the start of the next sentence how to make it read like that. Then I cannot begin.
My writing should read like my writing. I believe I need to write much more before I meet what that means. Perhaps only after I die, when all my writing is gathered, broken into pieces, habits extracted, language separated, and calculations performed, can my style be defined. If I treat that still-unknown thing as real and compare my unwritten writing against it, I may never write anything again. Yet if I reread a piece only to check meaning or typos and find that I like it, or that the response to it seems relatively good, I immediately want to keep writing that way. Even without explicitly thinking so, when I next try to write, that thought blocks and censors the sentence at the gate.
Even knowing this, the only solution is to relax thought. Thought itself must be free for fixed paths to disappear, and without fixed paths there is nothing to police.
So all I can still do is escape by listing facts such as, “The keyboard feels different from yesterday. Perhaps my fingers are stiff from exercise, or perhaps the keyboard feels softer.” I keep writing that way. Since childhood I was scolded for not listening, and now I am at the point where I must scold myself, but looking closely, scolding cannot fix this. It is frustrating. Perhaps writing is not done in the conscious world. Thought may be the shadow of a tree growing in the unconscious world, cast into consciousness. The unconscious world is like a digital file: in consciousness, no matter how I look around, before it is played there is only a silver memory card, and I cannot see where that world is contained.
Since I do not know where or how the original tree exists, I cannot change its leaves to beautiful autumn colors or make it a lonely winter tree simply by wishing. I only write what appears.
This makes me think I may be a television, a receiver for the unconscious. I do not know where the signal comes from, where unconscious thoughts arise, how they appear in my head, or how they become sentences. Yet I write.
Korean original: 넘어서다