What to Write When There’s Nothing to Write About
Written by Isabelle Drake and Ana Isabel Larios Maier. Graphic by Laura Garcia Gomez.
We all know it, that taunting, blinking cursor against the vast white of the page. Nothing, you got nothing. If it feels like nothing interesting is happening in your life, like you can’t think of anything of importance to say, you may have the highly debated to exist, writer’s block. The blank page is horrifying, and the never-ending storylines and characters in a writers brain can be overwhelming. Writing majors here at SCAD write around 5–10 stories for each class. And most writing majors, at some point, take three writing classes in one quarter. So they write a lot and can get burnt out very easily. We can only think of so many imaginary stories at once.
A long walk and a good playlist can be a surprisingly easy fix to this problem. It helps even more if you have a playlist for the book or story you are writing. Forsyth, here in Savannah, is the perfect length walk for a lightbulb to turn on. Make sure you have your notes app ready, the perfect idea might be right around the corner.
Here’s something to think about as well: write what you see; write your observations, especially those that resonate with you the most.
Beauty permeates the mundane, and the writer has the ability to draw from it. Whether it be through nonsensical metaphors or far-fetched poetic embellishments of the daily routine, you can extract meaning from the smallest of details. And you have the freedom to communicate them, even if it seems insignificant. But the truth of the matter is that it’s not insignificant, and actually it’s a good way to start the creative flow (which we all know is the hardest part).
Don’t overthink it too much. Just like a genre painter or a film director whose movies murmur slice-of-life ambiguity, the writer can excel in simplicity. Having a creative block can be part of the process, and that’s okay.
