When I have no idea what to write about.
Last week, I told myself to write more consistently so that I wouldn’t lose my language skills and I’m able to communicate/express myself better. That imperatively translated into a scheduled writing session that intended to produce a public blog post. So, here’s the plan: None, so far.
Let’s start by choosing a topic.
The sun always shows up, isn’t it? It’s Jakarta’s clouds (read: pollution) who’re being moody.
The topic is…?
As soon as I was thinking about what topic to write, which obviously I didn’t have at the moment, a question nudged my mind,
“Do you consider it as an act of showing up for writing even though you haven’t formed even a single cohesive idea at all?”
A follow-up question quickly emerged.
“Do you even need a cohesive idea to be able to write something?”
As these words were formed in my consciousness, I knew soon that another self-interrogation would take place. So I quickly wrote them down. Like, right now.
That act helped slow down the race of thoughts.
Yeah, that’s it. Now you understand one more reason to keep writing: to make you think slower and lean more towards action instead of staying in the clouds of your head. Trapped in the loop, or rather, frozen by your thought, I think to some degree, is not very productive. (Why do I need to be productive in the first place? Please, stop.)
Then this is my action: answering the previous questions.
if not cohesive_idea.exists(): raise NoIdeaException
Those are some sick Python syntaxes, a language that’s simpler than English. Again, as I write these statements, my head was trying to assess the truth of the code’s logic, in human language:
If you don’t have a cohesive idea, that’s an exception to follow your writing schedule. You want to generate quality prose to hit your target of exercising language, expression, and communication. Thus, postpone your writing until the idea is fully formed.
After a good one and half minute pondering about it, I can only state a fuzzy conclusion, which, in contrary:
Writing about having no idea to write is a potentially cohesive idea in itself. It might become a gem if you perform some freaking critical thinking.
What do you know about “critical thinking”, the old-good, highly praised meta-skill in the 21st century?
I try to define it simply:
To think critically is to ask question about something in order to reach a higher understanding. Critical thinking is all about forming good questions that help you grasp new knowledge more firmly, more wholly, and more thoroughly.
Luckily for me, whenever I formulate a question out loud, out of my mind, I have this involuntary habit of taking various measures to answer it myself. Maybe that’s what people call being “curious”.
From no idea to proper writing, here’s how I imagine it to be:
- I have no idea about what to write.
- I ask a question regarding that very no-idea situation, on how to find an idea, or anything else.
- I try to answer that question using only my head and heart first, without peeking into external sources — unless I have memorised them.
- If I deem my in-house answer to be somewhat crap, I’ll switch to research mode. Do my research in a religiously scientific way. Make a hypothesis or temporary answer. Collect some data from out there by reading, listening, watching, feeling, and experiencing. Compare, contrast, and conclude — temporarily. Then, to step up the game, redo the research process with a new better-informed hypothesis.
- Document every step. Rewrite, refine.
- Boom! I am a writer who used to have no idea.
But to this point, you, my readers, have read about 500 words of my hopefully not-so-crap thinking. Here, this is it. We have proved the logic of this section’s title to be wrong. (Do you agree? You don’t have to.)
For that reason, I won’t say that having a cohesive idea or argument is a requirement for writing. Besides the basic human functions God has blessed me with in every fragment of my consciousness, I only need a question, some time to sit and think, my laptop, and an opening phrase to compose a decent draft.
What can we gain from this?
No input, no output. Formulating an answer is a form of reading into our ingrained repository of knowledge. Doing external research also involves some knowledge absorption. Naturally, the more you read about something (and around that thing), the higher potential you’ll have to produce a cohesive idea regarding that something. Of course, in practice, there’s more engine need fueling and warming. Writing skill — forming an understandable sequence of words out of your abstract thoughts — is also a factor to turn the idea into something, possibly, fruitful.
Is this an example of showing up?
The moon always shows up, but my phone’s camera never gives it justice.
As soon as I push that question mark button on my keyboard, I hit a mental wall and feel fatigued. That’s no wonder since the length of this post has reached a double from my intention.
For all of that preaching, I’ll end this post with a practice to draw a temporary conclusion.
In many ways, not having a concrete idea to start is a gift. It frees me from the constraints of a defined topic and allows my mind to wander and be relaxed. I’d say that a more relaxed mind is easier to be more creative than a more tense one. Surely, this space is a place to exercise creativity.
The act of showing up in this context is simply making the commitment to think and pay attention to our inner chaos, to be curious, to trace the threads of a weak idea wherever they may lead. To make our line stronger, we can always sew more strands along the way.
So, show up to your empty “piece of paper” prematurely. Ask questions. Read. Then write.