My Self-Centered January Writing Prompt

By GrahamLewis · Jan 7, 2022 ·
  1. As of now, my creative well seems to have run dry. The best I can do is dig through half-finished stories and see about finishing them, or at least dressing the up differently. I hope it's a temporary thing, but, like most writers I know or know of, there is always the underlying fear that the pump will never again be primed. So I decided to write here, in hopes of doing some priming. Trick myself into writing, as it is; sorry if that seems self-indulgent, and I will take no offense if you stop reading here.

    Still here? Okay, let's go.

    Sometimes I feel I have reached the point at which I "know" too much. That is, I've seen enough of the universe unfurl that I understand what that Biblical prophet (whose name I forget) said, perhaps Ezekiel, that "all is vanity." That is, that nothing material really matters. Writing essays seems pointless; even if I do manage to get a fresh spin or take on something, so what? If it's fiction, what again is the point? Who was it that said, "anyone who writes for anything other than money is a fool." Well, what is there other than money, except perhaps the distraction of writing itself?

    Which, of course, may well be the point.

    A theological writer name of Michael Novak once wrote a book called The Experience of Nothingness, which loudly called out to my angst-riddled post-adolescent self; in it, he observed that there was something odd in having existentialists and nihilists writing books, that is, in committing the time and effort necessary to write them. If nothing matters, why do anything?

    Of course nothing matters.

    It's the starting point for everything. When I get off my butt and back to work (actually I mean on my butt and back to writing) things will flow, so long as I don't try to sketch them out ahead of time. I know of nothing more absorbing than to have fallen into the rabbithole of writing, nothing more rewarding than the feel of a fine-tuned and -turned phrase.

    I was going to end this with a pithy quotation I found recently, but I can't find it and will paraphrase: "For the man hunched over his motorcycle, trying to fix something, nothing matters but that. He has no time or need to worry over the so-called bigger picture" I'm also reminded of friend who loves bicycling, who pointed out that one reason he likes multi-day bike trips is that he go the entire day thinking of nothing but the road beneath and ahead of him.

    Okay, as Paul Harvey used to end his radio broadcasts, "my time is up, thank you for yours."

    And thanks for stopping by.
    Night Herald likes this.

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