Quintessence of Dust

Albert Brooks on writing: "it's one of the last things you can do without permission"

2024-08-03T13:50:00.008-07:00

The June issue of The Atlantic includes a deep profile of the accomplished but not-very-well-known comedian Albert Brooks.

Here's a glimpse of his view of writing:

This is partly his pragmatism but also his attitude as a writer—writing, he once said, is just a series of solving one problem after the next. He doesn’t believe in writer’s block, not really. “Writing is like building a house,” he told me. “Once you start, you have to finish. It’s a funny concept that there’d be a block in other professions. If you hired an architect and a year later you said, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, I was blocked.’ You’d say, ‘What?!’ ” Also, when you write, you’re fully in control. “It’s one of the last things, except maybe painting, that you can do without permission,” he said.

I found a few interesting nuggets in that paragraph.

His vision of writing as something you don't stop once you've started seems odd at first. The architect metaphor is funny, sure, but I wonder if his view is rare among writers. It's easy for me to picture an accomplished writer with one or a few unfinished projects—not just unfinished but indefinitely on hold, with poor prospects for ever being finished. And I know of at least one very famous example of a brilliant author who reports an affliction with writer's block. But actually I relate to Brooks' vision. Once I start to write something, I finish it. Or perhaps more accurately, I intend to finish it. It is very rare for me to start to write then get "blocked" and stop the project. Whether this is a helpful or useful practice/view is not clear to me. There are times when killing an unfinished project is the best plan, but this is not one of my superpowers.

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