Writing that Wants
By Sergio Figueiredo, Kennesaw State University

Alex Borowitz does not romanticize his writing process in “”Le Processus D’ecriture.” The main character performs an art-house style demonstration of a writer coming of age. We’re taken on a journey of struggle and invention that authors, writers, and directors know all too well, a journey of discovering what wants to be said? It offers a performance of what Victor Vitanza calls “a body that comes to expressing itselphs [sic] … a body filled with tics that cannot but (not) write! Twitchings” (“Abandoned to Writing”). Borowitz describes his process in developing this short film as one that called for inventing “a way to communicate both the order and chaos in my life” (“Reflection”).

In watching the video, I felt a kinship with Borowitz’s character, the student struggling to find a way into a life as a writer. The chaos of thinking and writing bursts out in moments of clarity. We let the chaos simmer. We find a way of making sense of the dis-order. We offer a part of our minds and bodies. We listen to the chaos echoing as we discover what writing wants—to be heard and felt. For Borowitz, the moment of clarity is of unknown origin, but it begins with a set of desires and takes form through a set of rhetorical and technical choices to make fulfill those desires.

References

Vitanza, Victor J. “Abandoned to Writing: Notes Toward Several Provocations.” Enculturation 5.1 (Fall 2003): http://enculturation.net/5_1/vitanza.html.