There's Something Paralyzing About Being A Writer That You Have To Escape. I Don't Want To Think Of Myself As A Guy Who's Written A Bunch Of Books. The 26 Letters Distance Us From Our Own Hesitations And They Make Us Sound As If We Know What We're Doing. We Know Grammar, We Know Prose, But Actually We're All Just Struggling In The Dark, Really.

-Nicholson Baker

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There's Something Paralyzing About Being A Writer

Nicholson Baker

There's Something Paralyzing About Being A Writer That You Have To Escape. I Don't Want To Think Of Myself As A Guy Who's Written A Bunch Of Books. The 26 Letters Distance Us From Our Own Hesitations And They Make Us Sound As If We Know What We're Doing. We Know Grammar, We Know Prose, But Actually We're All Just Struggling In The Dark, Really.

Topic

Distance

Struggle

Book

Sometimes I'll Spend An Hour Writing A Tiny Email. I Work On It Until I've Created The Illusion That I've Dashed It Off In Three Minutes. If I Make A Typo, I Let It Stand. Sometimes In Fact I Correct The Typo Without Thinking, And Then I Back Up And Retype The Typo So That It'll Look More Casual. I Don't Know Why.

Writing

Thinking

Email