Writing With No Subject

There are mornings (like this one) that nothing springs to mind or to my fingers as I sit at the keyboard. This is the third time of typing; the previous two got were one or two sentences long, then quietly got deleted with the rapid tap tap tap of the "Delete" key.

How do ideas germinate for writing? I couldn't really tell you. Sometimes they appear in my head the night before; sometimes something I read in the morning speaks to and through me. Sometimes simply beginning the process initiates the winding trail of finding a subject for that morning.

But there are also times - like today - where none of that happens. Whatever part of the brain starts the writing process just sits there looking at me with a dazed expression, as if to say "I've got nothing. How about you?"

Is writing communication or an exercise? It's both, really. I'd like to think that it is the process of me communicating to my theoretical readers things that I find important or useful or even silly upon occasion.

But I have also come to appreciate that it is just as much an exercise, or a series of exercises. It's an exercise in collecting one's thoughts and laying them out. It's an exercise in creativity to some extent, finding something to write on every day. However, mostly importantly (for me, anyway) it's become an exercise in persistence, in 5 days a week sitting down at something and creating - even if it is not good, even if it is not what I had intended. One of the great struggles in my life has always been keeping with something overtime. In some small way, this blog helps me along that path.

So writing, then, is about persistence and keeping a commitment to myself.

Hey look, I found a subject after all.