Most of the time, I sit down to write and I just stare. Indescript images bubble up in my mind and then fade, unattached to clarity or meaning or significance. I don’t know how writers do it.

I always think I’d be a decent writer if I had something to write about.

I sift through my own life, and see in it nothing of interest. Stuff has happened- but its the usual stuff that happens to everybody. Ecclesiastes 1:9. Nothing too remarkable there.

I’d love to say I am creative enough to come up with a short story or novel- some sort of narrative- but no. I look into the creativity closet and just see a big black gulf.

Nothing.

I regularly return to a guy like Hampton Sides or Ken Follett or Erik Larson, who knows how to sniff out something meaningful from events in real life, and turn the potential story around in his hands, viewing it from all sides, until he sees it fully: the characters, the turns of the plot, the significance of the story.

To do that, you have to be able to see stories.

And I wonder why I can’t.

Boy is born.
Boy lives.
Boy gets to midlife with no stories to tell.
Boy whines in blog.

See?

Not too compelling.

The desire is there, but, sadly, the vision is not.