Blog Entry #2: Uninspired Writing

  The easy way out of creative writing is to write about writing itself. That's the lesson I learned from Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, in which Kaufman himself is a character, a screenwriter entrusted with adapting The Orchid Thief, a non-fiction book, to film. Hard task indeed. Anyone who has ever tried to write something knows that the very act of creating can be a real pain in the ass, and that's the whole message of the film.
  I am pulling that card right now: I'm writing about writing because I know how frustrating and depressing it can get.
  When asked to write on a free topic, many things crossed my mind; things I love like comic books, films, food; and of course, things I hate, like pretty much everything else. And there is the first barrier: getting too intimate. One does not just jump head first into the abyss that writing involves. We are afraid and embarrassed with many aspects of oneself, and we do not want everyone to know. Shyness can be crippling at times.
  It then occurred to me that I could write this blog entry about something completely insignificant or irrelevant, like the chair I'm sitting on, but that would be too dull and boring, wouldn't it? Life's hard for a writing neurotic. 
  But why do I care anyway? It's not like this text is gonna get published, printed in the papers or made into a book. I guess the thing is we really do care about what people think, and criticism terrify us. And by "we" I actually mean "I".  
  Am I getting anywhere with all this? Not really. As in Adaptation, the purpose of "writing about writing" is to channel the attention to oneself, distracting it from the actual work. When the writer doesn't know what to write about, he writes about himself. "Look at me! I'm self-deprecating! I have no inspiration at all, so I'm gonna write about the only thing I'm certain to know about!".