The Quest for Inspiration

I was chatting online last night with an old friend of mine. At one point, she misunderstood something I wrote, and I tried to clarify it for her.

I pointed out to her that it can be difficult to communicate in writing. So many things that people rely on to correctly interpret what someone is saying are missing — tone of voice, facial expression, body language. It's got to be the main reason why "emoticons" were created.

"Emoticon" is the fancy word for those smiley faces people make with the parentheses and the colons and the semicolons to indicate that they were smiling or winking (or whatever they were doing) when they wrote the sentence that preceded. And if they're used appropriately — and sparingly — they really can help the reader better understand what was written.

But they seldom are used sparingly. Many people use them excessively, like internet acronyms (i.e., "LOL"). And anything that is used excessively tends to lose its value.

Things like emoticons and acronyms strike me as lazy devices that are used by people who either have nothing to say or no clue how to express what they want to say. When I receive an e–mail from someone who punctuates every sentence with an emoticon or an "LOL," I don't think that person is smiling or laughing constantly. If I did, I would probably think that person was an airhead.

I've had the misfortune of crossing paths too often with people who believe — mistakenly — that anyone can write. It's all just stringing a bunch of words together.

Well, I studied writing in journalism school, I've written for newspapers and a trade magazine and I've taught writing to undergraduates. And I can tell you that there is a whole lot more to it than that.

And sometimes, even people who have been writing for years and years fall victim to what is known as "writer's block." When you're stuck in "writer's block," you might as well be mired in quicksand — and freeing yourself can be hard. A skilled writer can make it look effortless, but it isn't.

That reminds me of a story.

When Johnny Carson was the host of "The Tonight Show," the show continued to have original programs in his absence because he arranged for someone to fill in for him. Today's late–night hosts don't do that, but in Carson's day, getting a gig as the guest host was quite a coup for a rising comedian. In fact, Carson's successor, Jay Leno, was a guest host on several occasions.

The guest hosts often came through when given their moments in the spotlight, but sometimes they bombed out. I don't remember if I read about this in a book or an article or if I saw someone talking about it in an interview, but once, when the guest host really bombed, Carson called him when the show was over and said, "It ain't as easy as it looks, is it, kid?"

That's the deceptive thing about writing. It looks easy, but it really isn't.

Take this blog, for example. I've been writing it for more than two years now. Three weeks ago, I wrote my 1,000th post, and I shared that milestone with my readers.

My objective, when I started writing this blog, was to write at least one item every day. You don't have to be a math major to figure out that 1,000 posts in two years averages out to about 1½ posts per day so, on the surface, I have met my objective, but, in reality, there have been days when I posted two or three items, and there have been other days when I posted nothing.

Sometimes, I just can't think of something to say. But lately, my problem hasn't been thinking of something to say. My problem has been that I find myself writing about the same topic — unemployment — too much. I guess that's what you might call an occupational hazard, except that, at the moment, I have no occupation. I'm one of the millions of jobless Americans, and, the longer this drags on, the more I find myself fixating on job creation.

Joblessness seems to be the only thing that really matters to me these days. That's not really true, of course. I care about many things. I'm interested in many things. But they seem to get blocked by this void in my life.

I know this guy who lives in North Carolina and writes a blog. (Well, I say that I "know" him, but we have only communicated online.) He does a lot of things with his blog that I would like to do. We were chatting one evening, and I mentioned that I'd like to write some humorous posts or flex my storytelling muscles more than I do, but I can't seem to get into it mentally right now.

I hope to do something like that later on, I told him. I'd like to write some light–hearted things.

"When you get a job?" he asked.

Yes, I replied.

We said no more about it, but I think he understood. And I hope you do, too.

Don't get me wrong. I want to write about serious topics, and it doesn't get any more serious than feeling that you are self–sufficient and that you have a purpose.

This experience has shown me the toll that joblessness can take on someone's self–esteem so I've learned something I would like to apply to my work when I become a productive member of the economy again.

But, at the same time, I would like to write about things I see that amuse me or intrigue me.

It ain't as easy as it looks.