The un-book

"To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written. While one writes one cannot simultaneously be gazing up at a glorious, abstract painting of what the book should be ... and at the same time expect to be advancing into the body of this particular earthly book. It won't work. You may gaze and gaze, but you may be sure that when you begin to write, that glorious ineffable volume will not coalesce on the page. Something else will appear. And then you have a choice. You can accept it, and get on with your writing, or you can throw it away, and pine for the painting. It is so beautiful! When you're not actually writing, you have the feeling it would be so simple to get it down on paper. Yet when the time comes, your sentences tangle you. They knot and seethe, grasping like desperate children, hampering you and making you fall so that the beautiful book, the infinite book, is forever out of reach.



The only way is to set the un-book - the gilt-framed painting of the book - right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear."

From Writing Past Dark by Bonnie Friedman.