Nothing to say

Like many nights, I find myself with little to say. I don't particularly have any topics about writing I want to address, nor do I have any stories in my head that are begging to be written down. I've been staring at this page for quite a while now, trying to think of what to write about or what to say, and I'm not really coming up with a whole lot, to be perfectly frank. And while I was thinking about that, I was thinking back to one of the few stories I have finished, and I asked myself what I did while writing that when I didn't have anything to write.

Oh yeah. I wrote very bizarre dream sequences for no apparent reason that were only incredibly loosely connected to the story.

Looking back, these are unquestionably the first scenes to be removed. They come from nowhere, they have virtually no impact on the story, and everything that they might have to say can be said better somewhere else. They are undeniably the weakest part of the story, and terrible pieces of story telling. One might even say that they were worthless to have written down.

But they weren't. As terrible as they may be, they served a purpose - they kept me writing until I could get back on track with the real story. Even if they were destined not to be kept, they helped me think about the things that might have been on my character's mind, what they thought about what was happening and who was around them. It helped me explore their fears and concerns, and their hopes for the future. They did so terribly, granted. But they helped prepare me for things that were to come. And even if that doesn't make it into the end product, that is vitally important.

It's a hard distinction to make. To write, and write poorly, or not to write, and wait for something better to come along. It's difficult to say which is the better option. The most common thing anyone will tell you is that you need to keep writing, that you can polish a diamond out of a turd later on down the road, and while that's true, it's not particularly encouraging. You pump out turds day after day, and they never seem to get any better, but you keep writing because you know that's what you're "supposed" to do.

But you always feel like the diamond in your head is just around the corner, and you're not giving it enough time to come to you. And the more you write, the more you push it back, because you need to go through the motions. But at the same time, the more you wait for the best thing to come, the more you question whether there isn't something better to come.

It all amounts to a whole lot of nothing. Nothing ever seems to get better. Nothing ever seems to go the way you want it to. And you start to run out of things to say, so you start saying the same things over and over again.

But maybe that's what needs to happen. Because once you start repeating yourself, those repetitions slowly start to become more coherent. They start to become the diamonds that have so long evaded you because, recognize it or not, you've started polishing the turds. By repeating yourself, you're really refining what it is you want to say. And maybe that's the key.

Or maybe I'm just spouting a lot of nonsense to try and justify my actions. Who knows. Won't stop me either way. Can't stop, won't stop, as they say.

Who even says that? I'm losing it...