Nothing to write about!

Posted on by Abhishek Jha

And suddenly I have nothing to write about. A long night at work – I wanted to write about it – how tiring and hopeless situations you grow into at around 2.30 am in the morning typing in some code that you are no longer sure of. I wanted to write about that. I wanted to take a shot at poetry – dead of a night – smoky chilled air – rains – thunderstorms – trees wavering like tresses of the love I deserved – I might have jotted down the perfect poem for the moment. I wanted to write about my struggles. I would  have liked to finish my debut novel  in a one night’s shot. I wanted to write a tale – a disarming one or maybe even a spooky one that would leave me in despair by the end of it – perfect setting of a night and an under-construction would-be corporate building – cranes, dump-trucks, excavators all lying dead like there never was any life in them. I wanted to make new metaphors and similes- like a bulldozer’s night sleep  or lie like a windowpane! 

You might not find anything very particularly sleepy about a bulldozer but look at them at night when the workers have gone to see their wives and you might understand what I mean here – look at them for a few minutes and think about all the time they had been toiling to pull and push. Let the chaos of the day sink into your skin and you would probably understand what sleeping like a bulldozer would mean.

And what’s so untrue about a windowpane? This might be easier to understand. How many times have you looked at the shut panes of your windows and wondered why you have not been able to break away yet? The pane makes it look much easy – a symbol of that boundary between what we are and what we could be – simple enough? Just break through the glass and you are there! Then there is another thing. I believe we try to play smart and try unfastening the door to get away. That is clever no doubt but then, it opens to a different world, not the one you would have reached had you broken the pane. That takes you somewhere else , probably another house that has similar window panes, or worse maybe not even those. The pane lies in our face giving us a false hope that we can break through it. Even if I do break through on a luckier day, we don’t know if the grass on the other side only ‘looked’ greener. Maybe we should just stop looking at the grass and see if we can find something else that is not so a function of color to tell us the truth! Colors can deceive.

I wanted to write about a lot of other things. However, I could only write about nothing. That nothing, that occupies my mind all the time. Nothingness – that is there in the world today. Nothingness that reeks from our stories, lies, and pretense. I ended up writing nothing of the night, nothing of our dreams, nothing of  all the work that we claim to do, claim to finish, and regret not completing. I wrote nothing about the ‘lie’fe that we ‘lie’ve every day.

In the end, I wrote nothing.

 

But that was last night. This morning, I wrote something.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture credit – wikimedia

 

 

Abhishek Jha

Founder Writer and Editor at The Seer.

See author's posts

    24 thoughts on “Nothing to write about!”

      1. We should have a syndicate kind of thing where we share writing prompts, inspiring subjects to write about. Thank you for sharing your views. 🙂

      1. Sorry you had to go through such a state. Let’s help out each other by sharing writing prompts every now and then. 🙂 Thank you for saying this here.

    5. Nothing.. is also just a concept. It doesn’t really tell anything (Nothing, lol). These things alway get me very philosophical.. What is nothing. And maybe it’s just very human to think everything has to be something. And there exists a nothing. Is nothing even there?

      1. Maybe nothing is also something. An inner circle to something. Like not doing something is also in a way doing something. Or maybe everything is in effect complete and nothing is complete too – like an ocean – you take something out of it, you add something to it – it remains the same. Completeness might be something like that.
        Sorry for adding to the confusion. Thanks a lot for sharing your views. Please visit again and keep sharing them. Indebted. 🙂

      1. Those moments maybe we should just speak with someone close. That helps sorting things out and getting out whatever is to be put down on paper. Thank you for sharing your thought. 🙂

    10. I know how you feel, something I have nothing to write about and I end up writing something pretty good about not knowing what’s really on my mind. I loved your post

      1. Thank you Marie. That’s very kind of you to say such a thing. This was just one of those days where your mind wanders and wants to say so many things but there’s something else occupying your mind that won’t let you listen.

    11. A brilliant write up; a write-up with layers, I like this one. Very nice! Loved the metaphors and how you played with the idea of the not’s – the ‘not’hings, the ‘not’ truths, the ‘not’ living, the ‘not’ writing. Want to see more stuff like this from your side… 🙂

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