Can I Write Something Else?

As an alternative—or antidote, if you will—to Jonathan Franzen's "lame" depiction of his struggle to write, here's a video essay by Kate Greenstreet, which was just published in Evening Will Come.

Cloth from Kate Greenstreet on Vimeo.

Of course, it's not a fair comparison. Kate is telling us how she writes poems. Franzen was talking about the novel, which is a different beast. And their problems, I would emphasize, are, in both cases, importantly different from those of academic writing. But perhaps you were moved, as I was, by part 5 (starting at 3:03). It is a very precise image of the struggle with a thought we're trying to put into words.