How is it as soon as I committed firmly and resolutely to a direction for the posts on this blog, I was unable to write in that direction and any direction? Do I have to misdirect myself in order to write – have to write about anything but that in order for writing to be possible? Frustration: there was clarity, I knew what had to be written. I brought home a book to inspire me, and put it beside my bed. That book, I said to R.M. this weekend. But it was too obvious – the book became a monument of what I wanted to make. The cliff stood before me: no, I wasn’t to climb.
Why is it impossible to write in a single direction? Why impossible to dream of completing a work by way of writing, this writing? Nothing is to be completed; the blog outlives itself. It was set up for that – but it is long past that. Then what’s it for? What is it that should be completed here? I wanted to write a post called The Street, I wanted to write an epic post called How It Was, How It Is, How It Will Be, but I’ve written nothing.
Misdirection: make no plans. Do not print out what you’ve written. Rise and early, open the curtains and there is the yard. Only before the yard does writing find its necessary poverty. The yard: the wheelie bin with the number 98 painted on it in white. The kitchen wall which, when I pressed my fingers to it yesterday, wondering how the slugs still found their way into the flat, was completely soaked. Another wall to be damp proofed?
The yard: I will have to buy some concrete mix and fill in the scar where the pipe was ripped away from the wall. Then I will have to paint over it and paint over the wall, from which flakes of paint have fallen, and across which the algae is spreading. Now, I tell myself, I am writing, and of nothing in particular. Nothing in particular: that is my name for the yard. That’s what it is called. By misdirection will I write of nothing in particular and then find my way back to writing.
Lars Iyer's Blog 