In 1997 David Foster Wallace got a grant to take the next year off from teaching so he could concentrate on his writing. A dream come true for any writer, one would think. In an interview, Charlie Rose asked him what he’d do during that year, and Wallace answered, “If past experience holds true, I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.” There was a self-conscious, helpless agony in his expression. I thought of an alcoholic, looking to the future with fatalistic despair. Rose was confused, first repeating Wallace to make sure he heard right, then letting the answer hang fire for several moments while his eyes flitted around in search of a follow up, and finally turning to new line of questioning.

What do you say to an author who dreads a waiting page? Wild success notwithstanding, shouldn’t he find some line of work he wants to do, instead of something he wants to avoid? But of course this misunderstands avoidance. Surely we can all relate. “It might be worth doing, but it’s hard and I’m tired so I’ll start a little later.” I’ve reasoned like that to avoid almost everything worth doing: exercise, homework, budgeting, and of course writing. Later in the interview, Wallace admitted that writing was very difficult for him. I expect he avoided writing in order to deaden the discomfort. But like any painkiller, avoidance can turn into a dependence and become destructive itself. The terrible truth of avoidance is that it’s self-perpetuating: you avoid writing to avoid being confronted by the burden of not writing, and by not writing the burden only grows. The anodyne becomes the cause of more pain, in this case guilt, and then more pain requires greater relief. The cycle continues, like a turn of the screw.

To a superficial eye, the pattern of worry Wallace spoke of, the eight hours of knuckle biting he suffered through every day, seems easily cured: treat the disease instead of the symptom. The symptom is worry or guilt; the disease is inaction. If it’s so agonizing to not write, then write and amputate the source of pain. It’s true, as far as it goes — action is the remedy of lethargy — heal thyself with pen and ink.

Perhaps easier said than done? It’s the tragic truth embodied by David Foster Wallace: the only healer who could help was the very one in need of a cure, himself. I’d say it’s easier to write the prescription than to follow it, but for a writer who can’t write, that wouldn’t make much sense.