There are various forms of writer’s block. For instance, one is nothing more than the fact that you have priorities coming into conflict. Or perhaps your desire to be a writer is something based in your ideal ego, but it is running into something beyond the pleasure principle – is drive having a heyday with this desire?
Then of course there is that dam that builds up when we have become habituated to a lifestyle wherein the busy-work of administration combines with your consumptive release valves of escape and energy recuperation – the contradiction between time and energy expenditure and its reproduction sacrificed toward means that inherently undermine the attainment of higher ends, like the writing projects you might feel stuck on.
These possibilities have only brushed up against the deeper issue I have been reminding myself and others of at Theory Underground recently: Thinking is nothing without reading, writing, and conversation, which is undermined because we lack timenergy, my technical concept for large energy-infused blocks of regularly repeatable and reliable non-instrumentalized time.
When timenergy is lacking, we are structurally hindered from cultivating deeper relationships with ourselves, others, and the development of our unique possibilities and talents. We get addicted to the tension between busy-work and passive consumption (scrolling, Netflix, whatever). The attention economy steps in to fill the void created when timenergy has been reduced to labor power, leaving distraction, anxiety, and writer’s block.
Without a basis in reading others deeply and regularly, and then writing in a way that reflects on one’s own relationship to thinkers in the past and relationships with others in the present, conversation becomes hallowed out and debased into mere talking. This idle chatter is itself nonetheless rewarding, because we need others. But for those with a stronger impulse to get to the root of things, the breakdown of the virtuous circle between solitude and solicitude (genuine being-with-oneself and being-with-others, as I develop this concept in chapter 2 of Waypoint) results in feeling anxious, lonely, or even depressed when “with oneself” or others.
With a million reasons at our disposal to not tarry with the negative, we flee from the site of confrontation with this lack. When the virtuous circle’s dynamic breaks and its two poles become refractory, the magnetic repulsion and tension between self and others devolves into a vicious cycle of idle chatter, non-committal curiosity, and anonymous, ambiguous, or ironic forms of communication. The “attention economy” is happy to commodify this as one of the most addictive products known to man. These are “vicious” insofar as they obstruct our higher callings.
When time and energy are fractured and timenergy is thus rendered impossible because most of our life has become caught up in the practices of labor power, busy-work, and survival, the time-without-energy at the end of the day or during the weekend is garbage time, and the random bursts of energy that come with a fit of inspiration every few weeks or so are non-repeatable or unreliable, meaning it is insufficient to reclaim one’s higher self from one’s debased animal coping habits. The internet, or going to the pub, step in to suture the vicious cycle, making it feel close-enough to the virtuous circle.
Reading, writing, and conversation, in that order, are the recipe of the qualified soul, of thinking that is not just reacting, of autonomous self-possession. So maybe that has broken down as well. If that is the case, then writer’s workshops will only further hinder the solution, which is safeguarding for yourself a larger and more readily repeatable block of time throughout the week that is dedicated to reading and writing for its own sake—as opposed to reading and writing in an instrumentalized way that serves labor power.
Reading itself, as well as the entire back-log of things you feel like you “ought” to have read, becomes a major player in the blockage. Leisure time for free creation after sustained dialogue with timeless minds and fellow travelers collapses under the instrumentalized weight of that ought.
Sometimes it helps to “sacrifice” all of those “oughts,” lean into drive, and just do whatever is immediately interesting, but then, instead of pulling out and moving on or back to life as usual, take that initial impulse of interest further, drill deeper even though there is no foreseeable return on investment.
If your current blockage is based in sacrificing the litany of “oughts” for the sake of some novel interest that you are living out as a sort of phase in your own self-exploration, then carry on and fuck yeah, you do you. But if you want to read and reflect/write on something that might inspire the reclamation of your own voice, might I recommend one of the most exemplary pieces of “underground theory,” written by my closest compatriot and mentor in Žižek studies, Michael Downs. This will be front and center in Underground Theory Volume One. It is called “Wage Labor and Jouissance: Why the Left Needs Žižek to Understand Workers“—a response to the “why does this matter?” kinds of questions Lacanians get from Marxists. But the “thesis” or purpose of this piece is not the point. I want you to get a feel for the style itself.
Mikey’s piece is not stuck in an academic perfectionist mode—it is using one’s life as a springboard into theory and back again! It is my hunch that, by reading this once or twice, you will become inspired, which may be half of what the doctor ordered. Inspiration honored by freed up (non-instrumentalized) time for solitude is a tried and true antidote to writer’s block.
Lastly, I want to close out with the most important piece of the puzzle:
The Fuck It Button.
“What is the fuck it button?” The person asking this question, with a heavy Chinese accent, was standing beside me over a cliff at what gets called “The Thai grand canyon.” It’s not a huge canyon, and the cliff was not more than thirty feet up, but both myself and the fellow asking about the fuck it button were pretty freaked out by the suggestion of the women in our company that we should, in fact, jump.
I had been waffling at the prospect of jumping until the Chinese guys showed up. They were really cool, in their mid twenties, unlike the hordes of annoying middle aged middle class Chinese tourists who come into Chiang Mai to take pictures of everything and everyone without ever treating the place or its inhabitants with basic respect. That was a big realization for me: Wow, most middle class boomers from China suck as tourists in ways similar to ones from the U.S.! But these guys at the little canyon were really cool and we hit it off great.
When I was originally asked by other students at Chiang Mai University if I would like to go to the Thai Grand Canyon, I had no plans to do cliff-jumping. Even when I was five feet from the edge it was not on my mind, until one of the guys in our party did just that. After he jumped, the gals started saying I should too. Now I had these really cool Chinese guys who spoke fantastic English saying I should do it, and I told the one closest to me he should do it. Then he started twisting his fingers and cringing, saying there is no way he can, he is too much of a coward, etc. That’s when I told him he should push The Fuck It Button.
When he asked me what it is, I told him: “It’s imaginary, not real. But you just imagine a button, you say, “Fuck it!” push the button and jump!” With that, I pushed the imaginary button and, to my own horror, proceeded to jump! I came out of the water to the cheers of everyone around. I shouted up, “Now it’s your turn!” The fellow squared up, did the same motion of pressing the imaginary button, and in the most Chinese way ever screamed, at the top of his lungs: “PUSH THE. FUCK IT. BUTTOOOONNN!”
It was something I will never forget. So what does it have to do with writing? Everything!
“Today one of the best and brightest at Theory Underground said, “… I keep coming up against the fact that I’m not all that good at writing for real… I’m still finding myself getting ”shy” when I go to interact in the forums, I just feel like I don’t have anything valuable to add, I’m having like a weird reflexive pity party and preemptively failing so I don’t have to deal with any actual failures.”
Of all the things I listed in this piece, concerning writer’s block, this fear of failure that does reflexive (over self-analyzing) pity parties is one of the most notorious. We all feel it, insofar as we are intellectuals. You cannot be an intellectually honest person who reflects on shit for real if you are not self-critical, but that becomes the biggest stumbling block.
Montaigne famously coined the term “essay,” which meant a first-stab or “an attempt.” The essay broke from the form of the book, freeing up an avalanche of ideas. Schooling has since co-opted it, domesticated the essay, and ideas were thus put back under the weight of perfectionism. Something similar happened to blogging, as it became a very important part of influencership and online branding.
But what are we supposed to do if we want to get better? How are we to practice? Do babies learn language by being perfectionists? Do adults learn new languages by only speaking once they’ve achieved fluency? No. Then how do we expect working class intellectuals and renegade PMCs who want to do theory to learn and hone concepts if we are too intellectually constipated to write?
I think the solution is to stop writing to the whole world, stop thinking about starting a media career, stop worrying about any of that shit. Treat Theory Underground like a special container for trial and error with others who are in a similar place. You have a thought? Write it out, put your finger over “publish,” and when the doubt creeps in—just take a deep breath, and then scream at the top of your lungs: “PUSH THE. FUCK IT. BUTTOOOONNN!”
