What to Write When You Don't Know What to Write
Right writing writes rights. I think.
All the way back on July 30, I published “Follow-Ups Are Hard”, which I would rank as one of my all-time worst posts.1 The gist was that I had started this blog thing with an idea for one post (my first), and now I was stuck and committed to writing, but without a direction.
Basically, I had writer’s block.
What’s funny is that writer’s block has a way of working itself out. Two days later, I was flying to North Carolina to visit friends from college,2 and the ideas suddenly flowed! Tanner and I were having a great conversation by his fire pit and, next thing you know, it turns into the “Fireside Chat”. My trip back was heavily delayed, and I wrote “Vacation is a State of Mind” while at Charlotte Airport and on the plane home.
I was thinking about this today while listening to Ezra Klein’s newest podcast:3
Part of Ezra’s conversation centered around how meditative it is to let the mind wander. Him and his guest both spoke about how some of their best ideas had come from taking themselves out of their lives’ usual structures.
This was a pretty big coincidence, seeing that I had just been texting with Matt (of Weekend Guest fame) this morning about an idea for an article which had struck him when he woke up in the middle of the night. Talk about out of structure!
Personally, a lot of my best blog ideas come while at the gym. This is especially true if I’m listening to music, since I’m actually just thinking, rather than putting in the energy to absorb and digest a podcast. When there’s a narrative to follow and voices to track, I struggle to juggle all of that with my own brainstorming. In other words, even if the podcast is inspirational, it won’t really accommodate inspiration.
When I think about it, I spend the vast majority of my day focused - on work, on writing, on listening to podcasts and radio. I don’t think I’m afraid of being alone with my thoughts, but I do think that my attention span has really eroded in the last few years. And I don’t think I’m unique.
I can completely understand why anyone might be skeptical that ~embracing nature~ or ~switching things up~ will make them more creative, but you have to admit that it’s going to be hard to create if you’re either working or consuming other people’s thoughts and content every waking hour.
Now, the other issue, in my opinion, is time (or the lack thereof). Most of us have jobs and obligations and can’t just take a stroll to ponder the world a la Einstein in Oppenheimer. Understandable, but frustrating.
Ted Gioia has a relevant quote:4
Sometimes [people reaching out to me] have very little interest in the writing part of being a writer. A dead giveaway is when they say: “I want to be a writer, but I don’t really know what to write about”—almost as if that’s a minor detail.
That’s like wanting to get married, but skipping over all the vows and commitments. Let’s go straight to the gifts and partying.
You can replace “writing” with almost anything creative (painting, podcasting, coding, starting a little business, whatever), and the meaning is the same. You need to actually do the thing if you want to claim the title.
What does this have to do with how much time we have to spare?
Well, in my opinion, not knowing what to write in a given moment is not a very good excuse. If you’re trying to hit a deadline or take put some time into a hobby during a short window, you don’t exactly have time to go for a stroll and let the mind wander. And doesn’t writer’s block always seem to strike at the worst times?
There’s an easy solution: have some ideas locked and loaded. You will inevitably spend little pieces of the day, here and there, thinking about random stuff. Some of that random stuff is most definitely funny, insightful, useful, or beautiful. Don’t let these tidbits slip away.
I keep a sticky note on my desktop with some brief thoughts for future pieces. These are things that I could see myself writing covering in-depth when I have the time.
I’m sure a journal would work just as well, if not better. What’s important is that we all have a lot of thoughts. It might feel like you have them all organized in your head, but, when you sit down and need to sort through the mental archive, it’s going to be a mess. Use an external helper to keep things semi-organized.
Admittedly, the title of this one was a bit misleading. The trick to writing when you don’t know what to write is to “always have something to write”. If you struggle with tapping into your creative side from time to time, try to do it a little more often, and try to capture even the faintest wisps of inspiration so that you can foster them on your own time, at your own pace.
Granted, there’s a pretty funny Yugioh reference, although you would have had to play in 2006 to get the joke. Side note: I just Googled that set to confirm the release date, and a sealed box of 24 packs is going for $2400. Yeesh, I wish I’d just never opened any of my cards.
Shoutout to Tanner, Nick, Vijay, and Stephanie!
Yes, I have the media taste of a 37 year-old Brooklyn snob. It is what it is.
“[L]et the mind wander”? Don’t you mean “rawdog your stream of consciousness”?