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| Jonathan Safran Foer |
Jonathan Safran Foer: ‘I don’t have writer’s block, but am a chronic sufferer of “Jonathan block”’
The author on canal boats, libraries and why he writes with a blanket on his lap
To mark the imminent end of summer, my boys and I recently went on a journey down the Erie Canal. Before being handed the key to our 12-ton narrowboat, the Oneida, we were given a shockingly brief and casual orientation. Much that was assumed obvious – “Obviously you tie your line around the cord in the lock, but don’t tie up, otherwise you’ll capsize” – was not only unobvious to us, but incomprehensible. When explaining the process of docking, the marina worker asked if we “knew knots”. Speaking on behalf of my kids, one of whom has Velcro shoes, while the other walks around with two snakes of laces trailing each foot, I told him we didn’t. He said, “Well, you know the saying.” I told him we didn’t even know that. He said, “If you don’t know knots, tie lots.”
I’ve now written three novels, but I don’t know how to write them. Each has been the result of its own esoteric, inefficient and frustrating process, each a genuine surprise. I have yet to write the book I planned to write, yet to write in the period of time I imagined the book would take, yet to sustain one way of working through an entire book. I try lots.
I wrote most of my first novel, Everything Is Illuminated, in Prague, at an old sewing table. While writing I would rhythmically pump the lever at my feet, which set in motion a flywheel on the table’s side, accomplishing nothing other than feeling necessary. (Nothing, as it turns out, is actually necessary for writing, but the feeling of necessity goes a long way.) I was 22, and didn’t realise I was working on a novel, which made things easier, as there were fewer questions to force myself not to ask: is it good? Will anyone care? Do I? I have never experienced what is often called “writer’s block” – the inability to think of what to write. But I am a chronic sufferer of “Jonathan block” – the inability to value my thoughts. Not questioning their value in the first place is ideal, but probably only possible before one becomes a professional writer.
Some of my second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was written in the main reading room of the New York Public Library, one of the vastest, grandest spaces in New York. Some I wrote in an unfinished, windowless basement. Some on a desktop computer, some by hand. For two or three years I awoke at four in the morning to work, savouring both the solitude, and the feeling of my own extreme caring. But I didn’t care quite extremely enough to sustain that, and took to beginning my workday after having taken the kids off to school, and read every article in the New York Times. I used to write in a nearby coffee shop, until a talkative breastfeeding circle started convening for brunch, and I was forced to the less vast and grand Brooklyn Public Library. I wandered a lot. Despite having no consistent process, no grasp on what I was working on, and no irrepressible passion to drive me, I managed to finish the book fairly quickly. But I don’t remember writing it.
It technically took me a decade to write my new novel, Here I Am, although the only sense in which that’s accurate is that it has been a decade since I published my previous novel. It feels worth acknowledging that I was doing a few other things during that decade: I wrote a book-length work of non-fiction, had two children, taught, moved homes. In fact, I wrote about two-thirds of the book in the final year. That year was the most consistent, energetic, and un-fraught period of writing of my life – the first time I felt capable of tying the proverbial knot on purpose.
There was no magic involved, and I have nothing that would be useful as advice to anyone else. I didn’t have any interesting superstitions, or rules for myself, or even ways of thinking about productivity. After dropping the boys off at school, I would walk home – rather than take a car or the subway – in an effort to both clear my mind, and create a passage between the domestic world and the world of my writing. (Thresholds aren’t necessary, but they feel necessary.) I’d buy a coffee across the street and park myself on the red corduroy chair I found in a vintage shop a block from my house. When I hit a Jonathan block, I would move the red chair to another room in the house, usually to another window. It’s almost too heavy to carry, and almost too wide to fit through doors.
If laptops seem misnamed, they aren’t: I used my laptop on my lap. Or rather, on a folded blanket on my lap. This brought it to the proper height, and also, I convinced myself, protected my balls from whatever radiation the computer was certainly emitting. I’d usually begin by trying to write something quite new, something whose use wasn’t obvious, something that felt reckless. Then I’d go back to the previous day’s work and remind myself where I was, while editing it as I read along, and attempting to both fill it out and push forward. Then, for the end of the day – my writing day rarely went longer than four hours – I’d return to the new, reckless piece of writing, and see if it might have some use after all. Sometimes it did. Often it didn’t. I had no fixed number of hours to sit at the chair, no fixed number of words to achieve. I would write until I started asking those stifling questions: is it good? Will anyone care? Do I? In my experience, there is no moving beyond that.
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