Making It Matter: What If You Don’t Know What You Want To Say?

In a preceding series of posts, I’ve talked about making your writing mean something.

Your writing should be about more than just people running around doing stuff. It should be about something that matters. I’m not saying you should deliver some kind of “message” (although there’s nothing wrong with that if there’s a message you think the world needs). However, I’m saying you should write about something that’s worth the time you invest in writing it, and the time that a reader spends reading it.

In other words, you should write about something that you and your prospective readers care about: learning to love, dealing with pain, finding friends, coping with family, making the world a better place, et cetera, et cetera.

But what if you don’t have anything to say? Or what if there are things you want to write about, but you’re worried that your thoughts will be dull or that people will laugh at you?

First, if you’re worried about such things, you are not alone. Plenty of writers go through bouts of insecurity and impostor syndrome. Furthermore, writing about things that matter can dredge up all kinds of baggage, and dealing with that stuff may not be easy. It’s even harder if you’re coping with depression, anxiety, or other such conditions. I am totally not the person to advise you on those kinds of trouble…except to say that you should consider finding someone who is qualified to help you. Caring for yourself is important, and may be a prerequisite for being able to write at all.

Second, remember that unless you’re a professional writer with a contract in hand, you’re under no obligation to show anyone your writing. If you write something and then decide to hide it in a drawer (or more likely, to stash it in a computer folder with some boring name that’ll discourage other people from looking at it even if they hack into your system), that’s totally fine.

In fact, I strongly recommend that you don’t share your work with anyone too soon. Work on it until it’s in a shareable state. It doesn’t have to be perfect (especially if you’re giving it to alpha readers or a workshopping group) but it shouldn’t be too raw. Go back and revise the piece until it’s ready to leave the nest. And if that day never comes, so be it. Every good writer occasionally has stories that just don’t gel. If you don’t sometimes find that you’ve reached too high, then you aren’t trying to reach high enough.

With those two caveats out of the way, let’s talk about finding meaningful stuff to write about. Sometimes you already feel driven to deal with a topic, and that’s great. Write what demands to be written. But other times, you might just struggle.

This is where daily writing comes to your rescue. In the first real writing workshop I ever took (an embarrassingly long time ago), we called this “freefall”. Now it’s often called Morning Pages. (That link tells you where the name comes from.) Whatever you call it, the idea is that you write freely and loosely every day—not to create something you’d ever show to anyone else, but just to let your brain play around. See what surfaces from your subconscious. Plumb your memories and your senses. Practice getting words on paper or pixels, just to develop your word-slinging skills.

Then (and this is important), review your morning pages a few days later. Read them over. Mark them up. Do certain themes or images keep repeating? Are some passages more alive than others? Are there points where you approach something that’s close to the bone, but then shy away?

Over time, morning pages will show you where your mind is at: what you’re truly concerned about…what engages your brain and your heart.

So that’s where to start. Next time, I’ll talk about how to use what you find in your morning pages if and when you’re ready to write a story.