Writing Problems: Not Writing

Plath, Kafka, Brock-Broido, Glück

One of the most difficult problems of writing is not writing—a state Samuel Beckett described in a January 1973 letter as “agonies of galloping speechlessness.”

By definition, not writing makes a writer feel as though they’re not a writer. But I think of not writing as being more important and revealing than such a simple definition might suggest.

Writi…