If I sit down to write and make the mistake of asking myself what I should write “about,” I bring the curtain down. Now my mind is really blank. The “about” problem is difficult to remedy, for writers think they should write, ably, at any time. But this is sort of like thinking that being virile means always “on.” If “about” comes to mind, I should be doing something else, and come back, when, and if, inspired.

Many of us express ourselves through writing, and all of us have stories to tell. Every experience we relive in our imagination is a chapter in a book, a tale waiting to be told. But, alas, all of us are not writers, and although everyone has something to write, only writers write.

I am not a writer, but I try. I try to write well, and occasionally do. When I don’t write well, I know it is not about the material, but rather that my choice of words, syntax, grammar, and composition failed to say what I wished to say.

I write to delight the reader without telling her anything, and therefore I write without an agenda. I know that what I say, if I say anything at all, is not going to be because of what I said, but how I wrote it. Readers will read anything well written, because words well written touch us like only language can. We are, after all, languaging beings. Words, sentences, and thoughts flash like lightning through us. It matters little what the words, sentences, and thoughts are, unless we are a writer. Then we must know how to arrange them.

I write to assemble my thoughts and express them. If what I write seems to be “about” something, it is purely accidental. I don’t feel I have anything particularly interesting to say, certainly nothing that hasn’t been said before, but for the challenge stringing words together artistically brings, I write.

Our minds are either a jumble of words or poetry, it is only a matter of how much time we give ourselves to them. We are not our thoughts but the still awareness of them. While thoughts flash like lightning through our mind, let us view them as a display that will fall into place if we stay out of the way. Some thoughts are wonderful, but not meant for others, let these out, and we impoverish ourselves. We must discriminate to whom the gifts flowing through our mind belongs.

If I write, I know I am borrowing from the reader who lends me his time. Will I repay my debt? If I labor with my work, I know my reader will labor reading it, and because I respect my reader, I must enjoy writing. If joyfully created, yet laboriously read, at least I tried my best, but if laboriously created, and laboriously read, what shall I fall back upon?

Spoken or written, we clothe ourselves though language. Are we well dressed? Overdressed? Underdressed? Colors matching? Discordantly dressed? Comfortably dressed? It is unfair to judge a person by his dress, but it is fair to judge a person by what he writes.

Honest words will always be better received than contrived words, even if carelessly written. While I can contrive my words to express my meaning beautifully, I cannot contrive the content to be beautiful. A writer must be honest.

Language is for the writer to preserve, not destroy. When nouns are used as verbs, as in “she medalled” at the Olympics,” and so forth, are we not attaining freshness at grammar’s expense? Grammar serves us as words do, and its usage is as important. Deliberate misuse of either is like kicking away the ladder we stand on. If I say, “it is a driving rain,” it is a colloquialism that everyone understands, for who can picture rain driving a car? But, when we write employing colloquialisms, we are not writing well. Our reader will overlook them. While we are stuck with many “coined words and expressions,” let’s not contribute to their growth.

Let us not be intimidated by the fact that we have nothing to say because surely that “nothing” has been ably said by not one, but many writers. The challenge then is to get on the list. Most good writing is about the common place, which has everything that an extraordinary event, person, vista, meal, wardrobe, house, teacher, lover, classmate or other thing of “interest” has. Good writing creates the interest out of the bones, it doesn’t need the meat.