How to Not Write

This piece has been rewritten and edited, emailed and critiqued more times than I can remember.   This is the 2015 version.  Since it was the first post I published on melindablau.com, it seemed fitting to trot it out again for this site’s resurrection! 

January 8, 2015.  For weeks, I agonized about this first post. And before I knew it, I was not writing.

This is the fourth or fifth version of an essay I started in the eighties, when my kids, then around 8 and 11, began to catch me in the act of not writing. Whenever our loft in the West Village smelled of brownies, one of them would ask knowingly (if not snarkily), “Got a deadline, Mom?”

Friends loved the piece; we all procrastinate about something. But I never tried to sell it, because the essay itself was an ingenious way of not writing. (Yes, “sell it.”  There once was a time when writers were routinely paid for their work. We were rarely asked us to write for “exposure.”)

I’d edit the essay, make little changes and, finally, drop it for “real” work. Years later, having forgotten it was on my computer, I’d find it and think, I should revise this. I always could, because it was always out of date. The first draft included “Alphabetize your albums or CDs” as one of the winning tactics for avoiding your desk.

Back then, the tools of not writing were concrete. Whether I stayed at home organizing my closets, or went out to the library or movies, I had to leave my desk to not write.

Now I don’t have to get out of bed. I can spend hours not writing while I text, google, poke, follow, tweet, or take my turn. Online word games like Words With Friends have helped me not write entire books.

Certain strategies transcend time. “Researching” and “reading,” for instance, made it into every draft. Both are essential to not writing. For many decades, I relied on reference books to not write. But in 2015, who needs a 600-page encyclopedia when I can dive into a pool of knowledge so vast I’ll never know its edges? Every email or link is a boon to my not writing.

You might have better resistence to the sirens; you might not be as pathologically curious as I. But not writing has never been easier. There’s so much to absorb, so much to distract me. And yet here I am again, starting another blog.

Samuel Johnson once said remarriage is “the triumph of hope over experience.” The same can be said of starting a new blog! This is my fourth. And let’s not forget: Blogging is like sending an email to the Universe. I can’t know whether anyone will ever read it. Come to think of it, blogging might be the best not-writing strategy of all.