I posted this on Twitter and it seemed to strike a chord I figured I’d post it here, too, just so that it doesn’t get lost in the constant churn of social media:
I’m hitting that particular kind of writing despair where my own over-familiarity with my materials gives the false impression that this is all obvious and that my book won’t contribute anything that everybody doesn’t already know. It’s an illusion, but it’s a pernicious one.
And I’ll just add two more quick thoughts to my 280 characters: 1) This happens a lot earlier in the process of writing a book that it seems like it should. 2) I absolutely felt like this with the last project and with other substantial articles I’ve written since, but I think the feeling is more acute with the current book project because I’m writing about authors and texts (Salman Rushdie! Yehuda Amichai!) much more widely known and so it aggravates the sense of simply pushing the things that everyone already knows around on a plate.