What Should I Write About Today?
“The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him.
He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it.”
— Roald Dahl
I’ve been sitting on this park bench for at least two hours now, thinking about what I should write about. It’s frickin cold and I want to go home, but I made a promise to myself that I would not go home until I had an idea for a story.
I am reminded of the scene in Spongebob where he is tasked to write an essay and finds himself procrastinating throughout the entire night. There is a montage of him when he suddenly feels inspired and starts scribbling furiously with his pencil.
This moment is refreshing for the viewer because this is a breakthrough moment for Spongebob. He has been procrastinating throughout the entire day and it finally feels like he is going to finish the essay.
We see him writing with passion and enthusiasm, sweating due to the continuous hard work. His eyes glow with pride and anticipation. We are dying to know what kind of masterpiece he will produce.
He finally finishes and his pencil is smoking from the ferocity of his efforts. We are finally shown the culmination of his struggle:
And so I sat there on the park bench, thinking about this Spongebob scene, with only the words “What Should I Write About Today” at the top of the page. I honestly think I would have preferred Spongebob’s magnificent “The”.
At least it looked beautiful — mine looked like indecipherable chicken scratch.
The sun started to go down, and the weather started getting too cold for me to stay out much longer. Feeling defeated and uninspired, I made my way home without adding any more words onto the page.
Since I’ve been trying to publish an article every single day, I use the earlier part of my day to either read or walk around, observing my thoughts and the world to see if I could provide at least one valuable piece of information to my readers.
Even if I failed at coming up with something during the day, I simply could not allow myself to fail at publishing an essay.
But the worrying thought followed me throughout the day — “if you couldn’t write about a single interesting observation or thought while you were out and about all day, what makes you think sitting in front of a computer will miraculously give you some brilliant insight?”
And with that thought unconsciously settling in my head, I sat at my computer, opened my Medium draft, and found myself repeating the same process.
I started writing the title: “What Should I Write About Today”. I genuinely didn’t know what I wanted to write about. I wasn’t sure if I could provide anything worth reading.
Then I thought that maybe I should just stop challenging myself to do this. I started thinking that these articles don’t provide value to anyone, and I was simply speaking to myself.
To distract myself from these darker thoughts, I decided to think about that Spongebob episode. How did that episode end? I had forgotten and was curious to know. So I searched up the episode on Youtube and I watched the episode to figure out the conclusion.
Spongebob spends the entire day procrastinating and avoiding what he knew he should have done. He knows it’s getting late and that he’s running out of time, but he can’t help but get distracted because he struggles with finding a clear answer to the question at hand: “What Not To Do At A Stoplight”
He does everything he can not to sit down and answer the essay question. He feeds his snail, he makes a sandwich, he takes a nap, he answers the door for the mailman and tries to strike a conversation with him (who is strangely delivering mail at night and is also omniscient, since he knows that Spongebob is procrastinating on his essay).
Strange things happen to him throughout the night, which we later find out was all part of a nightmare.
The anchorfish comes out of the TV and knows his name, he shrinks in size, his pants become sentient and runs away from him, his clock starts speaking in a threatening manner, his candle flame embodies an evil prankster who burns his “essay” to ashes, which leads to a blazing inferno that burns down his house while the house starts reprimanding him for procrastinating.
He wakes up and feels relief. He looks at the clock and realizes he has five minutes left to finish his assignment. He believes that it is impossible to finish the essay in such a short amount of time.
But he has an epiphany and realizes that everything he went through the night before was all a valid response to the initial question that had given him so much trouble.
He writes that he shouldn’t make a sandwich, feed his pet, light a candle, call his friends, karate chop the TV, shoot the breeze with the mailman… Before he knows it he is able to finish the writing assignment that had haunted him yesterday.
We can choose to wave off this children’s cartoon episode and its lessons and consider it as elementary, unsophisticated, and childish, or we can decide to see the unfolding of an important lesson in tackling creative endeavors such as writing.
Perhaps if you’re unable to find anything to write about, you must go experience life some more. You must struggle against and even surrender to your procrastination sometimes. If you can’t find any inspiration while sitting down, you must stand up and you must engage with life.
Maybe you do things that take your mind off the question you’re trying to answer. Maybe you dance, listen to music, play video games, talk to your family and friends, pet a dog, talk to the mailman, light a candle, read a book.
Maybe when you come back to the task, you will have a fresh perspective, or even realize that what you initially wanted to write about is no longer interesting to you.
Perhaps that might have been the issue in the first place, but you would never have known it if you sat in the same place, torturing yourself to come up with an answer to a problem you didn’t want to solve.
Perhaps you had some underlying motive that blocked the creativity from flowing naturally within you. Maybe you wanted to write about something that would make you sound smart to your readers. Maybe you cared too much about how your writing might look if you wrote freely and chaotically. Maybe you cared too much about what other people might want to read, which made you abandon your individual curiosity.
I could have written about the little dog that came running up to me and attempted very hard to jump onto my lap. The owner watched and laughed at her dog, while I dropped my notebook and showed the dog the affection it desired.
In the short time that I got to pet the dog, I felt the burden of writing lift from my shoulders. I realized that these interactions were worth writing about, and perhaps a story could unfold from this one experience.
Or I could have written about why I choose to walk to the same park every day, using the same route.
I could have written about the book I brought with me and the lessons I learned from reading through that book (for anyone curious, it is a book about Vincent Van Gogh — Dear Theo)
I could have written about the fact that I needed change in my life, that my routines were becoming too bland and easy. I needed more challenges in my life, but I was too comfortable in my proficiency and was turning a blind eye to my increasing boredom.
The last thing I expected to write about was a breakdown of a Spongebob episode, but if that’s what gets me to start writing then I won’t complain.
So the next time you feel writer’s block or feel yourself procrastinating on any creative pursuit, you should pause and live life for a little bit.
Don’t worry — that blank canvas will be waiting for you when you return, except when you do you won’t be able to stop yourself from pouring out your experiences onto it.
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
— Ernest Hemingway
