Nothing To Write About

By Michael The Libertarian

Out for dinner and sodas with a friend last week, as usual our conversation ran the gamut. My friend, Andy, “made his bones” as a journalist. He teaches in a local community college and (I believe) he still works as an editor. I should add that he is also a good friend and has been a source for some of the ideas for my brain droppings, here (and elsewhere).

I told him I'd sworn an oath to write every day for thirty days and would probably extend that, even if only to keep my nose to the grindstone.

Eventually, we got around to a really good column by a mutual friend. Then, Andy said: “He (our mutual friend) has probably written fifteen to sixteen hundred columns in his fifty years in the newspaper business.” Then, Andy turns to me and finishes with (I didn't realize he was building up to a question) “How do you find topics to write about, every day?”

I had to think about that for a second. My answer was a pretty simple one. I said: “Well, Ed's column is all over the place and he frequently writes about local personalities – whether they're well known or not. I use one of Ed's rules in that I reserve the right to plagiarize myself and I have learned you have to know how to write about how you have nothing to write about.”

Sounds strange, doesn't it? It's true, though. There are some days where sitting in front of my computer with my 32 oz. Crimson Tide (Roll, Tide!) cup of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi©, becomes a struggle of Herculean proportions.

I troll all the usual places (Yahoo news, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) looking for that mother load of fishy-smelling news that I can exploit to my advantage (that would be pronounced: “something to write” for those of you in Poughkeepsie).

Even with all my best intentions though, sometimes there's just nothing out there about which I can force myself to offer an opinion. Michael? Without an opinion on something? Yes, even with a twenty-four-hour-news-cycle, sometimes there's a lull in new news.

So, what is a humble writer to do? Well, we have to draw from our own experiences or the experiences of others. In the latter case, depending upon the subject, we may have to try to maintain a level of anonymity for our subject.

We write about watching the mailman interact with our dog or the turkey buzzards, circling over our yard, when there's nothing (sizable) dead or dying laying there.

We take a ride and expose ourselves to the people around our everyday lives. We ask questions of those people to get a different perspective on life. I've always had the “Irish Disease” of being very gregarious. I have struck up more than a few conversations with people while standing in line at the supermarket check-out.

When worst comes to worse, we can dig deep into our past endeavors and paint a very general picture on the issues of the day that have, in reality, been plaguing society for years. Shooting in a church in Texas? That same “headline” could have been written eighteen years ago (I think it was 1999). It was what made our very small church (perhaps 30 weekly attendees) priest ask that any man with a CCW “stand a post” at the back of our church.

Politician, breaking the law? That one might go back to Caligula or Nero.

Unfortunately, it seems that if we just look a little deeper than the surface, there are plenty of subjects about which we can offer an opinion or, even vent a spleen. This is the human condition. We don't often learn from our mistakes, obviously because we keep making the same ones over and over.

So, there's a little look into my version of the writing process. I hope I have been helpful.

- Michael

P.S.; I had nothing to write about, today.