Writing Without Writing To Oneself

Writing often begins precisely where the fear of writing poorly prevents it. This tension between creative impulse and formal demands shapes the relationship each person maintains with their own words.

The trap of the perfect word

The aspiring writer faces a paradox: they want to write but fear writing poorly. This fear is not merely a matter of stylistic modesty. It touches something deeper—the very legitimacy of speaking at all. Roland Barthes observes in Writing Degree Zero (1953) that “writing is precisely this compromise between freedom and a memory”. The memory here is that of learned rules, admired models, everything that ensures writing is never an innocent act.

This acute awareness of form becomes an inhibitor when it intervenes too early in the creative process. When I write, I can catch myself reworking a sentence ten times before even exploring where its meaning leads, starting with enthusiasm only to feel quickly blocked. The concern for immediate perfection cuts short the movement of thought. Attention fixes on the how to say rather than the what to say, on the wrapping rather than the raw material. Peter Elbow, in Writing Without Teachers (1973), names this tendency “premature editing” and considers it the primary enemy of the writing process.

The desire to do well then produces the opposite effect: it prevents doing anything at all. The page remains blank or fills with aborted fragments, with text beginnings saved in folders with evocative names: “draft,” “to revisit,” “vague ideas.” These files testify less to an inability to write than to too great an impatience to write well. Virginia Woolf, in her 1920 journal, confesses: “The worst of writing is that one cannot write when one thinks one ought to”. This observation captures the heart of the problem: the ought-to-be stifles the being-in-the-making.

Separating flow from form

Faced with this impasse, I discovered a way around it: radically separating the moment of content generation from the moment of shaping it. This distinction is nothing new in theory. Writing manuals have repeated it for decades. But between knowing one should proceed this way and actually managing to do so lies an entire learning process. The American Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones (1986), describes this practice as a form of meditation: “Keep your hand moving, don’t stop, don’t reread.”

What is at stake in this separation lies in recognizing a simple but often forgotten truth: creative thinking and critical judgment do not work well simultaneously. When one lets a flow of speech or words pour out without interrupting to judge them, something else emerges. Unexpected connections form, ideas arise that would never have seen the light of day within the framework of monitored writing. Paul Ricœur, in Time and Narrative (1983), speaks of “semantic innovation” that is born precisely from this freedom given to language to unfold outside well-trodden paths.

This practice, however, requires a form of trust: trust that the raw material produced in this state of semi-abandonment actually contains something valuable for later. It means accepting that creativity “doesn’t care about words,” that it is “beyond words,” that it uses them without concern for their immediate elegance. The shaping will come afterward. But for there to be something to embellish, there must first be material. Maurice Blanchot, in The Space of Literature (1955), evokes this necessity: “To write is to enter into the affirmation of the solitude where fascination threatens.”

Tools as mediators

If this separation between creation and correction (or rewriting) appears as a theoretical solution, its implementation raises a question: how can it be achieved concretely? How can one stop oneself from correcting along the way when seeing written words automatically triggers the critical reflex? This is where the paradoxical role of certain technical tools comes in. A dictaphone, voice recognition software, can serve as unexpected mediators in this process.

Using voice rather than direct writing presents a simple advantage: it prevents immediate rereading. Speaking creates a continuous flow that cannot be interrupted as easily as the act of writing—at least for me, accustomed as I am to filming in long takes. Words come out, follow one another, chain together without the possibility of catching them mid-flight to correct them. This technical constraint becomes a creative liberation. It imposes what will alone struggles to maintain: forward movement without looking back. Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media (1964), had already conceptualized that “the medium is the message”: the tool does not merely transmit content, it shapes it.

But these tools do not function as universal and timeless solutions. The same tool may help one person at a given point in their journey and offer nothing to another, or to the same person at a different time. “Before, I couldn’t have done it, but I wasn’t ready,” I told myself the other day. This remark points to an essential dimension: the effectiveness of a writing method depends as much on the psychological state and developmental stage of the person as on the intrinsic properties of the method itself. Julia Kristeva, in Powers of Horror (1980), analyzes how the subject constitutes itself in and through language, a process that varies according to moments in life.

The question of legitimacy

Behind these methodological questions lies an interrogation about legitimacy: who am I to write? This question runs through all discussions about writing difficulties. It concerns not only beginners but also affects people who have been writing for a long time. Michel Foucault, in “What Is an Author?” (1969), shows that the very notion of author is a historical and social construction. Writing is not simply transmitting ideas; it is also authorizing oneself to take a place in the public space of discourse.

This self-authorization encounters multiple resistances. First, there are external resistances, real or supposed: the judgment of others, the norms of the literary or professional field, the inaccessible models of “great authors” (who themselves often felt illegitimate). But above all, there are internal resistances, those voices whispering that what one has to say is not important enough, not original enough, not well-formulated enough. “What does it say about me if I give up?” I asked myself when facing my difficulties. This phrase reveals how the act of writing engages one’s self-image.

Giving oneself the right to write thus implies working on oneself that goes beyond simply acquiring techniques. I know this, having been blocked for thirty years, even though I knew all the techniques. It is a matter of modifying one’s relationship to imperfection, of accepting that the first draft is imperfect by definition, that writing is a process and not a finished product that springs fully formed from the mind. Pierre Bourdieu, in The Rules of Art (1992), analyzes how positions in the literary field affect the very possibility of speaking. But beyond social positions, it is each person’s psychic position toward their own production that is at stake in writing.

An evolving practice

Recognizing that writing methods evolve with people and moments in life opens a less rigid perspective on the matter. There is no single right way to write that would be valid for everyone and forever. Each person invents, adapts, abandons, takes up techniques again according to their current needs. “Perhaps one day I will never use this approach again,” I told myself about a method that currently suits me. This lucidity about the provisional and situated character of solutions found testifies to a practical wisdom.

Writing then appears not as a skill acquired once and for all, but as a living practice that transforms with us. What blocked yesterday may become fluid tomorrow. A technique that seemed artificial or constraining may suddenly make sense. This variability is not a flaw but a fundamental characteristic of any complex human activity. Donald Schön, in The Reflective Practitioner (1983), describes how professionals develop their expertise through a process of reflection on their practice, a process that leads them to constantly modify their approaches.

This evolutionary conception of writing has practical consequences. It invites experimentation without confinement, trying different approaches according to moments, projects, states of mind. It also suggests that periods of blockage are not definitive failures but passages, moments when the old way of doing things no longer fits and the new one has not yet been found. Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition (1958), reminds us that human action is characterized by its capacity to begin something new, to not be entirely determined by the past.

Writing for real

At the end of this journey, writing reveals itself less as a mysterious gift than as a practice that demands both method and flexibility. Method, to escape the traps of perfectionism and self-censorship. Flexibility, to constantly adapt approaches to real needs. Between these two poles emerges a space where it becomes possible to write without being constantly judged by one’s own gaze.

The separation between creative flow and its shaping—a method I am currently using—is ultimately only one possible means of accessing this freedom. The essential point lies in recognizing that writing does not happen all at once, that it allows for detours, hesitation, returns. That the first draft has the right to be clumsy, confused, approximate. That it is precisely in this state of lesser control that the most fruitful intuitions sometimes lodge themselves.

Writing without writing oneself would then mean finding that point of balance where exigency does not kill momentum, where awareness of one’s limits does not prevent trying, where the concern for doing well serves the doing itself. Not writing just anything in any manner, but first giving oneself permission to produce raw material, knowing that the time for sorting, polishing, improving will come. As Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994): “The first draft of anything is shit. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”