Do you have something that really bothers you? I do, and it’s the sentence “But I have nothing to write about.” But I hear it quite a lot, so I’ve got some pretty opinionated thoughts on the matter. I tend to write a lot (obviously), so nothing bothers me more than someone telling me “But I have nothing to write about” as an excuse not to write. I believe that there’s always something to write about, even if it’s not a story. Even if it doesn’t have a point. Even if it’s just what you had for lunch yesterday (I’ve run across some pretty amazing blogs that only document people’s daily lunches, believe it or not).
For a long time now, I’ve felt the urge to prove that life itself provides thousands of things to write about. To be honest, it’s one of the main reasons why I started blogging seriously (the term “seriously” being used loosely here). Because I wanted to prove that you don’t need to have an interesting life, an interesting place, or an interesting skill to have a reason to write. You just need to be able to construct sentences. There will always be something to write about, whether or not you’re aware of it.
One time when I was trying to convince a friend of mine to get a blog, she told me the Dreaded Excuse. “But I have nothing to write about!” she protested. I countered that daily life has plenty of things to write about. “But my life isn’t interesting,” she replied, still deflecting my attempts to convince her that blogging would be fun. I just shrugged at this, and told her that my life wasn’t all that interesting either. In fact, my life was incredibly similar to hers. Her reply? “Yes, but you make it sound interesting!“
That’s when I realized that I was really doing it — I was proving my point, even if it was only to a few people. Because while I love to write stories, I don’t think that I’ll ever want to stop trying to prove that normal people, with normal lives, can have fascinating things to write about in their own right. I’ll never want to stop proving the exclamation “But I have nothing to write about!” wrong. And the fact that I’m making a little dent in the credibility of that phrase with this blog… well, that’s enough reason to continue blogging in and of itself. And who knows? Maybe one day I’ll decide that I’ve written enough novels (once I finish the first one -_-“), and I’ll want to write a book about normal life, and normal people. One day, perhaps, I’ll write that book. But for now, this blog is enough.
Of course, simply knowing that there’s always something to write doesn’t always help. I occasionally have writer’s block, just like every other writer on the planet. I may know that there are lots of things to write about… but they’ll evade me, hovering on the edges of the blank page and in the recesses of my mind, too elusive to come in range of my pen. That’s when I have to give myself permission to write absolute crap. If you ever asked me how I deal with writer’s block, I’d show you the pages of junk I’ve written while creatively blocked. Things like “My wrist hurts. I’m hungry. I want food. Hey, I wonder how I would react if a raccoon came through the window right now…”
I’m not kidding.
Now, I wish I were like other writers when it comes to writer’s block — I wish I could say I take care of it in some romantic way, like going traveling (the way Cami-chan does), or meditating, or… I dunno, eating chocolate while listening to music. No, I just grab a pencil and write about raccoons coming through windows. Eventually, my stream-of-consciousness junk will yield an idea, and I’ll follow the idea to see where it leads. By the end, I usually have something I can write about. It may not be good, but as anyone who has experienced creative block can testify to: something bad is immeasurably better than nothing at all.
But when I’m in the midst of a story, writing about raccoons coming through windows or what I had for lunch isn’t going to cut it. That’s where art comes in. Actually, I didn’t realize I had pictures for all of my main writing projects until someone pointed it out to me. Whenever I’m feeling stuck on a particular story, I’ll look at its picture. What are the characters doing in the picture? What are their facial expressions? What does the picture suggest? With a scene then in mind, I’ll try to connect it to the place where I got stuck. Now, I’m incredibly lucky because I know several talented artists. One of them is Haruhi, who often takes my characters and brings them to life with her artillery of Copic markers. The result is always awe-inspiring, such as this picture:
These are the characters from my online novel (I promise to post a link to it soon, but first I need to get it back on its feet). It’s also my desktop wallpaper. I often find myself staring at the eyes of the characters, thinking “I need to write about them!” If it weren’t for this picture, the story these characters populate would’ve died already, relegated to the depths of my writing file, never to be seen again. This is the power of a conceptual picture for me. Both this picture and the picture for my novel are on my desk at this moment in their own little origami paper frames. They’ll probably appear many more places in my life before either story reaches its conclusion. Think notebooks, walls, backgrounds… thanks to Haruhi, I’ve discovered how to deal with writing fiction: having pictures. And when it comes to writing about real life… well, then we go back to raccoons and windows.
But that’s all for this week! I hope everyone’s having a good week!
Everything in the world exists to end up in a book. ~ Stephane Mallarme
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