What do I write about when I don’t know what to write about?
I run into this little problem frequently enough that I thought it deserved a dedicated response.
It happens to us all at some point. We sit down overflowing with energy and desire to write, but when it comes to actually putting pen to paper, we freeze. We can’t string two words together, let alone put out a sentence or paragraph. We don’t have a topic. We don’t know where to start. We get trapped in the spiral of crippling self doubt that makes anything we might possibly write feel stupid and contrived.
But there are ways to deal with this.
As it turns out, writing about not knowing what to write about is a perfectly valid thing to do. It’s one of several techniques I use to get over that first hurdle. It might seem ironic or corny to be writing about the thing that is giving me the most trouble, but it consistently gets me started.
Another thing I’ve tried which gets the ball rolling is to do something else for a few minutes. Read. Play a game. Do a crossword. Make a cup of tea or coffee. Go for a walk. Do some push-ups. It can really be anything. Sometimes trying to force the ideas out just doesn’t work, so I take five minutes to do something else. It gives my brain time to process the ideas in my head into something worth writing about.
Brainstorming is usually the next stop on the list. If I don’t know what to write about, I sometimes write a list of things that I would like to write about but have been putting off. While most ideas that end up on the list don’t get written about, the few that do tend to be fairly decent.
One other technique I have used before is writing prompts. They are great for getting me to think about things in new ways or consider ideas I’d never thought about. There are plenty of websites that dish up random prompts on demand. However, the trick with prompts is to not wait for the right one. Just grab the first one that catches your eye and run with it.
So there we have a handful of things to do when you don’t know what to write about. If you have one you would like to share, leave a comment below.