Writing about Writing is Writing

It’s popular to say that writing about writing is not writing.

I’ve decided I disagree.

Because writing is part of making art, and because making art aids people to become more self-reflective, writing about writing is just another level of being self-reflective.

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t have disciplined times to work on our fiction. But writing about the work we’re doing on fiction can be a huge part of getting past writer’s block.

I’m not completely prepared to say what causes writer’s block, or even define it. I just think that writing about writing, the meta-work of a writer, could be extremely good for you and could even be considered writing.

This is a philosophical concept I think ought to be called meta-writing.

I’m coming around to this once again as I read the postscript to The Name of A Rose, by Umberto Eco. His entire novel is a book about books. He spends the entire novel writing about the written word. Of course, there’s a murder mystery and a fairly decent performance by Sean “Shawn” Connery and Christian “Laettner” Slater if you can look past the sort of grainy kind of cameras they used in the Middle Ages. But really Eco spends the whole book writing about books, and then the postscript writing about writing. You’ll get this if you read the Postscript, which is actually published as it’s own volume in some cases.

If it’s good enough for Umberto Eco, it’s good enough for me. Happy writer’s Thursday.