Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

As I contemplated what to write about in this blog I realized how easily irony creeps into my life.

It had been only last week when I scheduled a post at one of my pages on Facebook that opened a discussion on writer’s block. One of the quotes I used in my post said if you have writer’s block write about it and you won’t have it any more.

That’s what I’m talking about!

Really. I’ve thought the same thing throughout my writing life. There’s always something to write about, as far as I’m concerned, even if it’s writing about having nothing to write about.

In fact, I believe writer’s block exists only within the parameters of a self-imposed restriction. And, technically, that’s how writer’s block is defined, at least by Merriam-Webster. The online dictionary describes writer’s block as “a psychological inhibition preventing a writer from proceeding with a piece.”

The thing is I can’t remember ever experiencing it.

Sure, I’ve sometimes struggled with how to proceed in a piece of writing or how to begin, but I always proceeded or began nonetheless. In some cases I proceeded or began by working on a different piece of writing while the one I was having an issue with percolated. Regardless, I continued to write. Something. Anything.

This is not meant as a boast. It is only to say I believe there’s always something to write about.

And maybe it all comes down to the ability to identify the potentially endless array of subjects to write about. Maybe those experiencing writer’s block don’t see the wealth of material available to them.

I remember on countless occasions as a features writer at a newspaper interviewing individuals who, at some point during the discussion, revealed an interesting fact about themselves or an experience they had had that they previously omitted. The most common reason an interviewee gave for not mentioning the interesting anecdote earlier was that he or she didn’t think it was interesting enough to bring up. In one case, a woman revealed to me that, as a child in Hawaii, she saw and waved to incoming low-flying Japanese planes just seconds before they bombed Pearl Harbor.

She had lived with the memory all her life, longer than half a century. The experience had surfaced in her conversations so many times by the time I interviewed her she had become blasé about it. In fact, she prefaced the anecdote by noting “some people find it interesting that ...”

The point is a writer can fall victim to self-imposed restrictions. They can take for granted material that can be harvested for any number of literary recipes, a crop of words ripe for the picking. For me, fortunately, it seems like the cropland is infinite, and I feel I will never run out of material.

There’s always something to write about.