Nothing To Say? Say It Anyway
Nothing to say? Say it anyway.
Those are the six words I used to tell myself at night. Wide awake at 1 a.m., with an internet connection and nobody to talk to but a blinking cursor on a blank screen, I’d take the leash off my mind and follow where it wandered.
I felt compelled.
See, for 15 years, I worked as a sports writer in Jacksonville, Illinois, and I got stuck in a lifestyle I couldn’t get out of. Most of my work happened from late afternoon until midnight when we put the paper out. I’d go to a sporting event, do my interviews, write my story, help with proofreading and pre-production, and then go home, buzzing.
Sleep was out of the question. I felt more awake from midnight to 4 a.m than at any part of the day; a peculiar situation for a family man in a small town. I’d open my laptop and sit there, jittery, restless, trying to be quiet so my wife and daughter could sleep. I relished the solitude, but still felt a bit lonesome.
Nothing to say? Start clicking away. I hoped those long nights would result in a novel, a short story collection, anything I could use to advance my career. But no. Anything I left unfinished after one sitting tended to remain unfinished. Once I came to terms with that, the rule was I had to finish in one take. I could write anything I wanted, but if I slept before I finished, it was as good as erased.
Everyone’s muse is different. Mine doesn’t like being told “I’ll finish this later.” It knows me too well. So I wrote poems and vignettes — the sort of fever-dream stuff that comes most naturally in the predawn hours when you really should be sleeping. Me, I’d stare at that blinking cursor until it summoned my demons. Then I’d begin to write.
If you feel compelled to write, but your mind is a fog of aimless thoughts and vague emotions, hit the keyboard and get to clicking. What begins without aim can still find its mark — and almost always surprise you. I gained a dependable following with my insomniac ramblings. More importantly, I taught myself writing tricks and turns of phrase I used to much greater effect in my professional work.
When you stop surprising yourself as a writer, you inevitably become a hack. You turn to tried and true methods and formulas for getting your words across. Sure, hackery will get the job done, but without much flair or fun. Writing is supposed to be fun.
Below is an example of the sort of writing I did back in those days. It’s not great, but it illustrates the process. In this particular case, I started with a ho-hum journal/diary entry and then followed my imagination somewhere else.
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From February of 2003 ….
Scrambled Eggs, Again
The morning after dawned cold and white here in the frozen Midwest. It wasn’t much fun cavorting in the wet, windy chill yesterday evening. The roads seemed dangerous already. I got myself home in haste.
Now, home is where I’m stranded. Several inches of snow fell through the predawn hours and kept on falling through the afternoon. Now it’s layered atop the frozen rain from two nights prior which had already glazed the streets. All my events for tonight are canceled. My editor called and ordered me to stay in. “There’s nothing happening out there that’s worth going in the ditch.”
On days like this, my living room windows really are too big. I can see the courthouse clock tower looming over all the dreary downtown buildings. An American flag atop that tower flaps in the chill breeze swirling the flurries from rooftop to rooftop. Down below, the streets are empty, except that every few minutes, a car crawls by with its windshield crusted in ice. Current temperature: 12 degrees fahrenheit — or minus-11 celsius.
Somewhere out there, some poor man is fixing a late breakfast for the woman he brought home last night. She was supposed to leave before he woke up, but the icy roads forced her to stay. He’s doing his best to be nice, but now his patience is cracking. She won’t shut up or sit still. She keeps taking the cell phone from her purse, fiddling with it and complaining that Conroy won’t answer when she calls — whoever Conroy is. Her hair is a messy nest of smooshed curls and expired product, but she seems fine with it now they’ve been intimate.
His bedroom is still rich with the scent of what transpired (and perspired) in there some hours ago. She’s got that haggish, old-makeup smell about her as she stomps around his apartment, alive in all her dramas. In a crowing voice that makes him wince, she interrupts herself to ask him if she can use his bathroom. Without speaking, he waves impatiently a “yes, by all means!” gesture. He’s trying to appear busy. He wants to avoid a conversation.
His head hurts. He picks up an egg and carefully cracks it over the skillet. But the yolk breaks apart, spreading yellow across the surface of the pan, as usual. He bites his bottom lip against this additional irritation. He reaches for the spatula and sighs.
Looks like it’ll be scrambled eggs again.
