Monday, August 13, 2012

slavoj zizek on writing

I'm totally behind the curve on most things, so it's not surprising that I only got around to watching the Zizek! documentary the other day. It wasn't great; it was okay, diverting. I like Zizek – more for his shambly self-presentation than anything else. But I very much like what he has to say about the perennial torture of writing:
It's psychologically impossible for me to sit down [and write]... So I trick myself. I put down ideas, in a relatively sophisticated form, a line of thought, full sentences and so on. So up to a certain point, I'm telling myself, "no, I'm not yet writing, I'm just putting down ideas." Then at a certain point, I tell myself, "everything is already there – I just have to edit it." So that's it – I split it into two: I put down notes, I edit it. "Writing" disappears.

1 comment:

Archambeau said...

I refuse to believe that he's edited a single word.