I Got Nothing
I'm a day behind, and so I should be writing two blog posts today in order to catch up.
But really. I got nothing.
Usually, I have something to complain about. Or I can walk you through my day, and spit out a thousand words that way. Today, I had the day off, and I mostly laid around in bed watching movies, reading, resting. It was fabulous, I assure you, but not a day I feel compelled to blog about. I suppose I could write a mini-thesis on the superiority of watching television in bed versus watching television while sitting on the couch, but I suspect you have your own Best Way, and my way is just my way. I could give you a review of The Girlfriend Experience, but if you want the tepid reviews, you can read them on Amazon. I could tell you everything I like about Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, and the total cuteness/yummy-ness of Billie Piper, but fangirl squee makes for boring blogging.
I've been cruising around Googling "freelance writing" this evening. There's an amusingly vast number of "how to" articles written no doubt by freelance writers trying to generate web content, about freelancers generating web content. If you're not careful, you could fall into one of these black holes and lose every shred of hope you ever had of making a living as a writer. There are several websites that purport to list useful leads for freelancers, mostly for copywriters who can work in person, in SoHo, generating ad copy for the myriad of uninteresting products and services that require dull and uninspiring internet ad copy. I'm reminded of a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and also a documentary I saw about people in some Asian country living in internet cafes, making a dollar per webpage or some sad statistic like that, no doubt writing Nigerian e-mail scams and cialis spam. Maybe writing code that spontaneously generates Nigerian e-mail scams and cialis spam.
Freelance writing just doesn't seem to be a viable career. It seems sort of like eating celery, where you burn more calories chewing than you actually gain from digesting. And in the end, you have a portfolio full of badly spelled Nigerian e-mail scams and invitations to watch Mandy on LiveWebCam. It's what you do, I suppose, when you Got Nothing. Sort of like what I have today. I don't have any bright ideas for a new poem, short story, or novel. I don't have any bright ideas about brilliant blog posts. I checked my stats today, and the Top 10 Western Dumplings post is my current best-seller. It seems that a lot of people are seeking photographs of spaetzle and soup dumplings. My stats tracker says I should be blogging about unusual foods, not the existential angst of making a living as a writer. I should definitely NOT be posting poetry, or stories from my trunk. I should not be doing book reviews, especially if the books are several years old. Movies out in theaters now seem to be an ok draw. Perhaps that's it. I write about a movie and a weird food, every day.
I could give you a behind-the-scenes on the movie-theater hopping I wrote about the other day. When my friend and I used to spend the day at the movies, slinking from theater to theater, we would first make a food run. I had a huge, black, fake leather purse, and we'd make the rounds at our favorites places to fill the sucker up before seeing the first matinee. Candy. Sodas and chips. Loaded baked potatoes from Wendy's. With chili and cheese and sour cream. Red vines. All loaded into this great big shoulder bag and smuggled into the theater. There were many days when we were the only people in the theater, and we would unpack this disgusting picnic and make pigs of ourselves in the light of the silver screen. We'd eat enough calories to fuel an entire third world village, and wash it down with cold Coca Cola. Little did I know back then that I would be recounting the story in a desperate attempt to Have Something, when I Got Nothing.
This article about freelancing showed up on my Facebook wall today. Among other things, it says that you can't be a writer and have writer's block. You need to be able to sit down and generate copy on demand. You don't have time to be a prima donna. You have to put words on the page in order to eat. However uninspired. However awful and pointless. You have to make the words flow in order to live. If you have to beat yourself about the head and shoulders with a tire iron. If you stay up too late. If you piss everybody off. If you bore everyone to tears. You have to Have Something, because if you've Got Nothing, you'll starve. In a gutter. Without pants. And die.
So, even if I've Got Nothing, I'll write about that.
I'll write about anything. Even nothing at all.