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writing about having nothing to write about.

 

From Murakami’s Novelist as a Vocation (p.82):

“When I began my first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, I knew I had no choice but to write about having nothing to write about.”

First things first: I have no delusion ambition to write a novel.

I want to write more because it’s becoming more and more clear to me that the only way I can get in dialogue with my own thoughts is to put them somewhere tangible 1. If I let them brew exist outside my mind, I can return some days later to see what they have to tell me. If I try to wrestle them in my mind, they run circles around me.

Unfortunately, doing so has been harder than I anticipated. For the longest time, I wanted to write this blog 2, but I felt constipated stumped about what even to write about. I still feel that way, even more so now because I am going through some dog days. My brain feels like a badly made soup. I throw a bunch of things at the imaginary wall in my mind, but nothing sticks.

Thankfully, I came across this quote from Murakami. It allowed me to at least write this nothingburger post about having nothing to write about. I am hopeful I have plenty in the tank to write about, but if I cannot scramble anything, I will come back here again and again to write about just nothing.


  1. e.g., a sticky note, a reminder on my phone, an event on my calendar, a physical notebook, telling it to a friend (or even to my therapist), and this blog. ↩︎

  2. I have been trying to motivate myself to write a blog like this for more than three years. ↩︎