I Have Nothing To Write About

Original Post Date September 18, 2013 at 11:08 AM

Writing about nothing is actually writing about something. Von demonstrates how.

It started that way for everyone sitting around the pond. Our instructor, who I have a photo of but can’t remember her name, was trying to instill a writer’s fervor into our 11-year old heads. My fellow advanced writers and I that spring of 1988 sat staring at blank pages of journals. “But I have nothing to write about,” one lamented. We backed him up in solidarity with a whine of agreement. The instructor sighed. “Write that down, then.” So we all wrote, I have nothing to write about, across the page. And paused our writing tools for further instruction. “You have ten minutes, write from there.” And she walked off. We looked at each other. We looked at our single sentence. The ducks looked at us.

This morning…