When you don’t know what to write about…
When I first started Typing Monkey Publishers, LLC, I committed to posting one blog post every month. And I have to admit that it has been harder than I originally anticipated. Here it is, March 31, and I have not posted anything for the month. There are several reasons I could come up with to rationalize why this is - lack of time, lack of energy, more important things to do - but the main reason is that I simply do not know what to write about. And for the last two weeks, I have agonized over this impending blog post and inwardly lamented about my lack of ideas. So, the lack of a topic to write about has in fact become the topic.
Experts on creativity suggest that it is more about dedication/practice/routine than those sudden bursts of inspiration that we often fantasize about. I’ve read countless articles about how we should dedicate time to our creative pursuits on a regular schedule. The idea is that it is the practice and discipline that is important, not the finished product. Whatever we create during these scheduled periods is not what matters. It does not have to be good, or even useable. The important point is that we did it. Anyone who has ever embarked on “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron has seen this theory presented through the morning pages. I did morning pages while working through “The Artist’s Way” and continued for another year because I found the daily discipline to be helpful.
So, what do we write when we don’t know what to write?
Anything we want.
Because it does not have to be good. It does not have to make sense. It does not have to be read by anyone else. What is important is that we write.
But that can be overwhelming. Anything? Anything! The very idea of limitless possibilities often makes us freeze up and find ourselves unable to make decisions. This is a lesson I learned the hard way as a dancer. Any time the teacher gave the instruction to improvise movement, I found myself unable to decide on a single movement because there were so many possibilities. It was not until much later in my dance life that I learned the importance of setting boundaries when practicing improvised movement. By creating exercises with set rules, we place limits on what we are able to do, and therefore decisions become much easier. It is easier to choose one thing out of five rather than five hundred!
So I suggest that when we don’t know what to write, we write anyway. We just create a structure to work within. Give yourself a task. Choose words out of a jar that you must include in your writing. See how many words you can use that begin with the same letter. Write a story that stars a well-known character in a completely different role. Try poetry if you usually write prose. Give yourself a framework to work within, and then just write.
It doesn't have to be good. But it just may be.
