How To Write When You Have Nothing To Say

Start.

I opened the document. I did the typing. Am I writing anything useful? Revolutionary? Of note? No. Not even a little bit. Am I writing? Yes.

I probably do have something to say.

But I don’t know where to direct my focus. What are my interests, my passions, my hobbies? What thoughts run through my head every day? What questions do I have about life, the universe and everything?

Alright, I do have something to say after all — but why would anyone want to read it?

Another perspective is always useful. Another’s advice, experience, journey. Another’s pitfalls and failings. Another’s success and wins. Another’s thoughts and feelings. Another’s muses on the world.

Seriously?

They might not. Maybe no one will read my writing ever. But am I writing for them, or am I writing for me? Why am I writing? What’s the purpose of this?

To escape escapism.

Writing has been an escape for so long. A way to create another world, another life, a glimpse excitement and normality beyond the four walls of my room while the panini wreaks havoc on all ideas of what my early twenties would look like. But it’s escapism. All writing is writing is practice is flexing the muscle but if I want to be a writer I can’t purely create unpublishable garbage. A 435,000-word piece of fiction with no speech marks is no use to anyone but my anxiety. Running for twice the length of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and not half as good — what am I supposed to do with that?

435,000 words — nothing to say?

I struggle to write in my voice. First-person fiction is my forte. A character, easy. When it comes to writing as me, I lose all sense of self, become a shell of a person. I’m sure I had interests, experiences, a personality maybe, lying around somewhere.

Minimalism. Slow living. Low-impact and zero-waste living. Style and curating a small wardrobe. Cooking and recipes. Skincare. Escaping capitalism and all its fake rules. The difficulties of creating a life that involves both constant movement and owning a cat. The joys of plants and the even greater joys of cats. Graduating during a pandemic. Trying to buy a car when you don’t know anything about cars and no one you know knows anything about cars. Moving across the country. Moving across the country again, this time alone. How to make an alright dessert from random crap in your fridge.

How to write when I have nothing to say:

Make a list of everything I know anything about. Research those things. Write about those things. I can start easy — how does a listicle sound, or a recipe?

Power through the imposter syndrome. No one knows who I am and I don’t have to tell Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook, or my parents that I wrote a thing. But I can if I want to. Maybe later when my self-esteem’s returned from the murky depths of wherever it’s hiding.

Maybe not.