Writing About Not Writing

Many months after my last post, I find myself with 28 unfinished drafts and dozens of blank titles. I am drowning in scattered references with no continuity or substance. Did I forget how to put a sentence together? What is happening, and how can I get out of these harrowing paragraphs?

Meanwhile, I try to keep my life afloat, swinging back and forth between

"I have to call..."

"I have to check..."

"I have to go..."

"I have to do..."

I also need time to be completely lazy and do fuck all, that's for sure.

Unfortunately, every time I want to blame a job, or something else, I think about...

Haruki Murakami, who started writing while running a jazz bar and struggling with debt.

Franz Kafka, who worked as an insurance inspector while writing absurdist novels, tormented by "a horrible double life from which insanity is probably the only way out."

Charles Bukowski, who escaped to the typewriter after his shifts to let the frustration out on paper, expressing hatred of his long-term position at the post office even more violently than Kafka, saying: "slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."

What do all these writers have in common apart from unfulfilling professions?

They all fiercely protected periods of uninterrupted solitude.

Writing became their escape. Perhaps the page was the only place where life felt entirely their own.

On my second week of holiday, away from the city, on the fourth day without socialising, and after exactly 14 hours of utter solitude, supported by a solo hike, I can finally sit behind a desk and put something together, even if it just feels like a warm-up after all this time. Sounds like a slightly privileged recipe for just a handful of lines, doesn't it? The writer's block was real, not because there was nothing to write about, but because I forgot how to write about it. One line comes, and the other immediately doesn't flow the right way. Do I want to think about it now, when I have exactly 30 minutes until I need to be there and do this? "No!" I shut it down. Then I forget I even tried. There the months flow...

I haven't personally cracked the combination of functioning as a regular member of society (going to work, socialising, doing the chores, visiting one's family, keeping oneself in the loop with current politics, paying this, paying that, texting a friend, trying to relax) and a regular writing practice.

There is no time to be reflective when there is no time to live.

Perhaps it is not about time being the only factor, but about making time to create the right conditions. Pushing can work for some. A regular routine can work for some... I am someone who needs a lot of space to untangle my thoughts, since I can hardly mentally process taking the dishes out of the dishwasher after eight hours of work.

If I ever want to lay my eyes on my writings again without shame... the words have to breathe, and so do I.

Photo by Karolina Trummová: Rýchory, July 2026

Sources:

Barry, T.Z. "12 Kafka Quotes That Explain Social Anxiety." Medium, 14 Nov. 2015, tzbarry.medium.com/12-kafka-quotes-that-explain-social-anxiety-4fa85b180344.

Bukowski, Charles. "Quote by Charles Bukowski." Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/quotes/105923-the-problem-was-you-had-to-keep-choosing-between-one. Accessed 17 Jul. 2026.

JJ. "Kafka and the Double Life." The Silence You Don't Know, Substack, 23 Sept. 2025, thesilenceyoudontknow.substack.com/p/kafka-and-the-double-life.

Jones, Josh. "Charles Bukowski Rails Against 9-to-5 Jobs in a Brutally Honest Letter (1986)." Open Culture, 17 July 2014, www.openculture.com/2014/07/charles-bukowski-rails-against-9-to-5-jobs.html.

Murakami, Haruki. "Haruki Murakami: The Moment I Became a Novelist." Literary Hub, 25 June 2015, lithub.com/haruki-murakami-the-moment-i-became-a-novelist/.

Takumasa, Senno. "Haruki Murakami and the Transition of Modern Culture—From the Perspective of Young Readers in East Asian Cities." Advances in Journalism and Communication, vol. 9, no. 4, Dec. 2021, pp. 130-143. Scientific Research Publishing, doi:10.4236/ajc.2021.94011.