Hey, I’m annoyed too. But here’s hoping how I got over my writer’s block inspires your own breakthroughs!
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Photo by Wei Ding on Unsplash.
So, we all know real writers leave piles of books and papers lying around their homes or workspaces, right?
After all, how else to impress real women?
When I tried that however, there’d be a lot of vomiting involved. By my cats on my books and papers I mean. Which meant they had to go on my “temporary,” set-up and put-away as you need it “writing table” instead, which had limited space.
June 13, 2023
It wasn’t enough. Instead of encouraging resolution of the epiphanies and writing ideas contained therein, old piles would simply get pushed aside for new piles as inspiration stuck me. Then pushed under new piles once I had even more new ideas, destined to be forgotten.
July 6, 2023.
Eventually, the prospect of clearing my literal physical and mental space just became overwhelming. Some of those piles you see above had even endured my divorce, somehow emerging unscathed on my table—the table—from one apartment to the next. (Joking not joking.)
If I couldn’t follow through on any one writing idea though, then I couldn’t come up with any new ones either, lest the books and papers collapse and crush me under their weight. Which, in a sense, happened anyway: having a constant physical reminder that I was unable to ever follow through on anything, was like an albatross around my neck, robbing me of all passion and motivation. Love continued to forsake me. As did my friends, embarrassed at my naivete when choosing my bookcases.
I consoled myself in drink.
But then one evening, looking up from my couch in a drunken fog, I made out an unused space through the haze. And then a Facebook alert about someone in the neighborhood selling furniture brought sudden, rare clarity…
From that point on, things proceeded quickly:
To secure the bookcase, I had to reserve it before getting approval from my roommates. Fortunately though, that would soon be granted after arrival:
I made other changes around the apartment too. From now on, visitors to my humble abode will no longer think they’re entering a cat cafe:
Rather, they will be greeted by at least one guard, to whom they must submit themselves for inspection. Once they have been given approval though, and allowed to proceed, they’ll immediately be subliminally influenced by whatever books I’ve placed on my new bookcase for their arrival…
Don’t worry—I’m not a total monster. I still regularly leave the cat tunnels out for the guards, especially late at night when regular visiting hours are over. I leave the (now clear) temporary table out for them to jump on too, and they appreciate having more room to jump on and off it.
But in all seriousness…I have been serious throughout this post. I really have been in quite a funk these past few months, and the act of clearing the table, and sorting and moving those piles really does feel like I’m finally emerging out of it. I haven’t even had a drink since that day either.
So, if simply buying a small bookcase proves to be such a catalyst for personal change, I’ll happily take it.
And I’m not ashamed I needed this crutch at all. Rather, I’m sharing so that, if it feels like some things are holding you back in life too, you may be more inspired to pinpoint what they are, and less embarrassed to act on them. However simple and mundane they may seem to other people.
Good luck!
If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)
The Grand Narrative 
Many years ago when printed catalogs were a thing, us engineer’s had overflowing shelves and piles of data books in every corner of our offices and labs. Except John Farr. He has only one shelf of data books. And yet he always had the reference material he needed, and would gladly accept new data books from salesmen. It puzzled me.
One day I asked him to explain this contradiction. His system was simple. Every new book went onto the shelf on the far right. Anytime he got a book out to use, he would also return it to the far right of the shelf. If the shelf was too full, he would grab a few books from the left side of the shelf and throw them away.
Maybe there’s a lesson you could take away from John Farr’s data book shelf system and apply it to your stacks of notes?
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Good anecdote thanks, and indeed that is the basic intention. Because really, all I’ve actually done is transfer the books and papers from a table to a bookcase. More important than that physical transfer then, is that the bookcase now mentally represents 5 ‘slots’ for 5 things I want to work on (it would be 6, but the cats need the top-left one empty to jump up to and down from the tall bookcase!), and that I can’t put anything new in the bookcase until one is slot is emptied, either through actually completing and writing the idea or deciding the original idea won’t really work.
At least, that’s the plan anyway—at the moment, those piles are a complete mess, with random books and magazine articles I want to read mixed among among materials for about a dozen writing ideas I’ve got. But I hope to pare them down to just 5 soon!
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