writer's block

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i'll be honest.

i don't know what to write about.

and i'm thinking of writing about having nothing to write about, but my last two blogs have already been about writing. in fact, the "Writing" tag (well, the one with a capital "W" at least) is currently just made up of three of my blogs. so, you might think, is this on purpose? some sort of self-referential/meta thing? the new direction of sputnik sweetheart?

but i'll let you in on an insider secret:

anytime i write about writing, it is because i don't know what to write about.

whenever i'm in this predicament, i follow the time-honored technique of free-writing: writing whatever comes to mind, without thinking about it, without stopping. focusing on getting pen to paper, or in this case, my fingers to my keyboard.

this makes sense to me. i mean, no one wants to looks at a blank document. it's too intimidating. so i start vomiting as much as i can on my wix page until it looks approachable enough to work with. half of these free-writing sessions begin with the sentence "i don't know what to write about," because i can usually only think about my lack of writing.

i want to write. i know i want to write. or at least, i'm eighty percent sure. maybe i like the idea of writing more than actually writing? it is, at the very least, therapeutic. writing helps me make my thoughts tangible. something that i can manage and organize after the fact. i'm really good at reading. and writing about reading. but writing on its own? why is it so hard for me?

i know what i like and dislike. my favorites pieces are the more political ones, like "human(ities) in crisis: the defunding of uic's lcsl" and "hank green & comfort politics." and you guys seem to agree. these blogs have ten times the amount of views as my other posts (not that anyone's counting). and the thing is, they were written in the spur of the moment, in under an hour. in both situations, i was fueled by strong feelings of anger and a clear vision.

most of the time though, i feel like i'm scraping the barrel, grasping at straws, [insert another idiom here]. that is not to say that there is a shortage of political events i have thoughts on. but having thoughts and having something to say feel like two different categories to me.

this past summer, uic radio sent out a call for bloggers to write about the chicago ice raids if they wished to do so. and i really did wish to do so! the situation hit close to home. my parents are immigrants. my mom, a naturalized citizen, was stopped on her way to work in early june. but when i sat down to write about this, nothing came of it. in my journal, it reads "my neighbours uprooted the bushes between our yard and theirs yesterday. they are going to build a white picket fence next tuesday, but as of right now, there's no indication of where our yard ends and theirs begins. just flat dirt and yellow grass. there's gotta be a metaphor in here somewhere. (open borders?)" and that was as far as I got.

blogs are like creative essays. the word "essay" comes from the french word "essayer" which means "to try." and if i could describe writing in one word, it would be trying.

here's to hoping i stop writing about writing and figure something else out.

take care,

sputnik sweetheart ⋆˙⟡♡

(all images sourced from pinterest)