Ideas about Nothing

When I started a blog I planned on it being about my interest in decorating and collecting. It worked for a while, but then I ran out of ideas. In high school I recall that creative writing class was not fun for me. I had no idea what to write about. Maybe I had a crappy teacher. I’ve always had a bad memory. I don’t remember why I struggled, I just remember that I did.  I started to journal when my kids were little. I was afraid I would forget something cute they said or did. Good thing, the journal, cause when I dug back to reminisce I thought to myself, “I would have never remembered that.” The quick entries that I jotted down after they were finally in bed jogged my memories just enough to take me right back to that precious day.

I just read an excerpt from Steven King’s “On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft” He summarized 10 tips for writing. Tip #9 was about finding ideas. Unfortunately, he said there’s no “Idea Dump” or “Story Central.” Damn, if it were only that simple. But he offered good news. He said that Ideas come from nowhere. They fall out of the sky. Here I thought I had to think things up myself, and I wasn’t sure my imagination was wild enough for that.  He said, “It’s a writer’s job to recognize the ideas when they show up.”

I had an amazing art teacher in college. (of course I don’t remember his name).  He said, “You don’t just get better at drawing, you get better at looking. “ The first day we were instructed to draw a self portrait.  I had no formal instruction so at first I was afraid to put a single mark on the paper. Mine was terrible. Every few weeks we had to do another self portrait. He saved them all until the end of the semester. When he brought them out, we were amazed at how much everyone had improved.  Many of our portraits practically  morphed from stick figures to black and white photographs using only charcoal pencils.

Kids’ first drawings of people are usually very primitive. When Anna turned 3 years old Mick was just an infant. She drew a picture of me. It looked like a usual drawing of a person done by a toddler, except she included my glasses and an extra line between my stick legs. I asked her about the extra “leg.” She casually answered, “Oh, that’s your vagina.” She hadn’t moved on to drawing the stick figure with a separate head and body with arms and legs, but my amoeba-shaped portrait was complete with eye glasses and a vagina. We didn’t rush to the therapist over that one, I just chocked it up to having a new baby at the time and discussing at a 3 year old level how babies are made and where they come from. Apparently she was pretty good at looking for a 3 year old artist.

The hard part for me with writing is seeing, recognizing ideas when they fall out of the sky. Good thing I am not trying to make a living at this. I had run out of ideas, so I took a break from writing. I worked on getting in shape and preparing for my son’s graduation party. One day, half way through my workout, my phone went dead. I was half way around my 6 mile loop.  Dead phone. I was stranded. I couldn’t even call my son to pick me up. I had no choice but to continue on without the help of itunes. I expected complete torture, however, it turned out to be quite the opposite. I retracted into my head and started talking to myself. Amazing how we can slow down and think when we are not over stimulated. I probably looked like a mental hospital escapee to passersby, but I didn’t care. Ideas were falling out of the sky, and I was recognizing them, just like Stephen King said.  I was so excited to get home and write that I actually jogged a little bit. (Just kidding, I made that part up about jogging)

Speaking of slowing down and thinking, it’s really hard today with all the stimuli flying around. Everywhere, there are talking screens. There’s a lady advertising cleaning products at the end of the swifter isle in the Walmart. I saw an Entertainment Tonight plug on a screen recently while I was pumping gas. At first I probably looked like Dorothy when Oz started talking, wondering where the voice was coming from, but eventually I just wished that  he would shut the f*** up. At least I hope that remark stayed inside my head. I might have mouthed the words as I do when I’m out walking. The guy pumping gas next to me probably thought that I had tourettes or something. I don’t care. I decided to embrace silence and give up the ear buds. Now I prewrite while exercising. That’s about all the multi-tasking I care to juggle. Constant noise drowns the imagination.

I recently heard an interview with David Gray. I didn’t know he had a few failed records before he was recognized. He spoke about how artists start out writing about what moves them, hoping that the audience will appreciate it, love it. If you are lucky enough, a scary thing happens. You get asked to create for hire. What a curse for an artist! Your wildest dream becomes a nightmare. I don’t follow rules when I write, but if I were ever hired I would have deadlines and guidelines. I’m starting to be thankful that no one reads my blog (Not really). I happily scribble away about cheese its, broken hockey sticks or covering up a hole in my dry walled garage, much like the premise of the Seinfeld series.  I write blog posts about nothing. Somehow they end up turning out to be about something.  I’m mostly just humoring myself, and I’m A-OK with that.  No one is beating down my door to hand me a check in exchange for a deadline.  I also don’t have to look up in the sky and hope an idea falls into my journal by 5 pm next Friday. When I’m short on inspiration I set down my pencil and go for a long walk.