you must begin somewhere

what to write when you don't know what to write. a tragically common problem among writers, artists, creatives, and anybody else that is constantly put on deadlines to extract nuggets of material from their brain that are nothing less than spectacular.

it's times like these that i'm dragged back to 9th grade english (and yes dragged is the appropriate word). back then they made us do this exercise in which you are required to write without stopping to edit, punctuate, capitalize, brainstorm, sneeze, pee, or make fun of the teacher's terrible thanksgiving sweater. when i was 15 this was quite possibly one of the most useless activities on the face of the planet, right up there with putting your seatbelt on, and trying to understand algebra. then again, when i was 15 i was stupid, at least for the duration of that thought process.

i find it terribly interesting how common i think this thought "man if i'd only realized that when it was told to me the first time". it's not that i don't listen, i'd like to think i'm a fairly good listener, especially when i'm being instructed on how to do something, or taking mentor-ish adice on some life lesson. it's also not that i'm incapable of comprehending complex cerebral ideas and deep lines of thought that may have more than one meaning at any given time.

i think situations like these, where you're told to write for the sake of writing, that it will make you a better writer, that you may be surprised with what you actually write, these situations are ultimate misunderstandings that befall 90% of the people being told. whether it's because they're hungry, they're attracted to the girl two rows over, they really don't like that sweater, or a million other possible reason, they will not WANT to do this assignment.

assignments like that have a 0% success rate if the student doesn't want to do them. you must let go, free your mind, be the ball, or whatever other matrix-like line you want to use. the 10% that actually do this assignment will gain the knowledge of what's really inside them when they read what they wrote, not believing that they could write like that, but for those 90% they will continue to tell stories of how bad 9th grade english was. you can be told, you can hear, you can listen, and you can understand (or so you think), but if you don't believe, the outcome of these exercises will not benefit you at all.

so pick up your guitar and record yourself playing nothing in particular. close your eyes and type about nothing (it helps to literally start typing about why you're typing, and just go from there, you'll be surprised where you end up). begin drawing and don't lift your pen up till you see something. look at familiar scenes through a mirror. do all of these, but don't even try them if you don't believe you'll come up with something great.