Albert Brooks on writing: "it's one of the last things you can do without permission"

The June issue of The Atlantic includes a deep profile of the accomplished but not-very-well-known comedian Albert Brooks.

Here's a glimpse of his view of writing:

This is partly his pragmatism but also his attitude as a writer—writing, he once said, is just a series of solving one problem after the next. He doesn’t believe in writer’s block, not really. “Writing is like building a house,” he told me. “Once you start, you have to finish. It’s a funny concept that there’d be a block in other professions. If you hired an architect and a year later you said, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, I was blocked.’ You’d say, ‘What?!’ ” Also, when you write, you’re fully in control. “It’s one of the last things, except maybe painting, that you can do without permission,” he said.

I found a few interesting nuggets in that paragraph.

His vision of writing as something you don't stop once you've started seems odd at first. The architect metaphor is funny, sure, but I wonder if his view is rare among writers. It's easy for me to picture an accomplished writer with one or a few unfinished projects—not just unfinished but indefinitely on hold, with poor prospects for ever being finished. And I know of at least one very famous example of a brilliant author who reports an affliction with writer's block. But actually I relate to Brooks' vision. Once I start to write something, I finish it. Or perhaps more accurately, I intend to finish it. It is very rare for me to start to write then get "blocked" and stop the project. Whether this is a helpful or useful practice/view is not clear to me. There are times when killing an unfinished project is the best plan, but this is not one of my superpowers.

"Just a series of solving one problem after the next" sounds to me like an apt description of any project of any kind anywhere. But it reminds me of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, whose title is a cuter way to say "solving one problem after the next." Lamott's advice to create lots of "shitty first drafts" is one of my personal proverbs.

But let's think about his claim that writing is "one of the last things, except maybe painting, that you can do without permission." At first I found that quote to be shallow and dumb. Once you admit that painting also qualifies, you reveal the topic to be creation writ large: surely composing and singing and sculpting and dancing can be done "without permission." Is there really something special about writing? Maybe there is. First, we might include most creative work as variations on the theme of "writing." Second, we should note that writing is not tied to a medium (even painting has that limitation)—you don't need anything special in your hands to be able to write (especially if you are cursed with the ability to compose whole paragraphs in your mind while on your bike). But maybe what Brooks has in mind is this: writing can be (or seem) unmediated, unfiltered, my brain to the page. I have all the control. In the end, I see his point, but suspect that he overestimates the specialness of writing as creation.

Still, it's always valuable and inspiring to consider the words of a great creator as they reflect on creating.

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Image: A public letter-writer sits at a desk reading what he has written with his quill pen. Coloured lithograph. 1800-1899. Source: Wellcome Collection. Public domain.