Blind spots

One day several months ago, a writer friend and I were taking a walk. He was telling me about how his father hadn’t loved him and how that relationship was holding him back, stopping him from writing.

Well, write about that, I thought. Write about being rejected. That’s your story, your wound. It might not be the only thing you could write about, but maybe you need to write about that so you can write about other things.

But I didn’t tell him what I was thinking. Why? Because, in my experience, when it comes to our own stories, self-discovery is vital. It’s just not the same thing when someone tells us what they think we might need to write about. In addition, as my friend and I were walking along, I could actually sense his writer’s block. It felt heavy and solid, like it had a lot of history behind it and wasn’t going to move.

The whole incident made me sad, because, when it came to writing, my friend was just as talented as a lot of writers I know. But sometimes our stories are so close to us, so embedded into our bodies and psyches, that we can’t see them. That’s why they’re called blind spots, I guess.

Joseph O'Neill

I drew the above sketch while watching a TV show in which Charlie Rose interviewed novelist Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland: A Novel. The story is about two cricket players (which is why you can see the words "play cricket" on O'Neill's forehead). When asked about his writing process, O'Neill said that, unlike some writers who compare writing to chipping away at a piece of marble to reveal a human figure, he makes random chips at the stone to see what happens.