#12 When you have nothing to say

and that in itself says something

In his book A Writer’s Diary, Toby Litt starts one his diary entries, dated November 7, with this sentence: “If I start this entry further down the page, I won’t have to write as much to reach the bottom.”

There are days, weeks, or periods when writing is less easy because I feel like I don’t have anything to say. There are days I want to start further down the page so I can reach the bottom. Today feels like one of them, but the self-imposed schedule of this newsletter drags me in front of my laptop, and the digital structure of this newsletter won’t allow me to start it further down the page. It’s also sunny outside and I’d like to be with my friends instead.

Not having anything to say, when you have the space for it, is not unproblematic because it might suggest a failure. In The Space of Literature, Maurice Blanchot suggests that writing begins at the threshold of speech’s impossibility. That the writer is always caught between the urge to speak and the failure of language to fully hold experience. Not having anything to say perhaps feels so heavy because of this. It’s not merely the absence of words, but a confrontation with the limits of articulation itself. And I’m terrible at facing that at times I’m not as articulate as I’d like to be.

At the same time, I feel that the fact that I don’t have anything to say isn’t entirely what I’m frustrated with. I’m frustrated, instead, with the potential answer to the question I ask myself: what am I not saying?

I’ll spare myself the agony and anticipation: most often, it is because I/we focus on how to say things rather than what to say. I expect words to arrive in neat procession, thoughts to arrange themselves into something worth sharing and that make sense. While I value form deeply in writing, I find that it’s a dangerously painful thing to let it win over content. Because there are moments where language falters and the mind circles itself without landing. And they too point to something—that wonderfully fragile and vulnerable space before articulation.

I thought a lot about what to do in those moments—when you have nothing to say. In the context of this newsletter, for instance, I thought about, what if I don’t publish anything today? Do I always have to produce, say things, even when nothing—no thought, no reflection—finds its way to me? Isn’t there value in staying silent in those moments? Isn’t silence necessary when needed and preferred to “invaluable” content produced just for the sake of producing?

But then I thought, if there might be another way to think about it. Yes, the feeling of not saying anything is unsettling—in conversation, silence makes people nervous and in writing, it feels like failure. Though maybe, it is also not a command to stop, but instead a permission to sit with the inarticulate.

And some days, you don’t even have to start further down the page to reach the bottom with less words or things to say. You just start from the top but don’t reach the bottom and that is also okay.

So here I am, at—almost—the bottom of this essay, having decided to write about not having anything to say, rather than simply not having anything to say. Instead of running away from that silence, I’m letting myself sit with it—letting meanings be unformed for a while and allowing thoughts to hover, unsolidified.

There’s another passage by Blanchot, in The Infitnite Conversation, where he speaks of writing as an act that approaches the unknown, a space where language undoes itself in order to reveal something beyond mere expression. I’m finding that even the inarticulate itself already has or takes its own shape when you let it to percolate. Not an absence of something—to say—but a gesture toward another kind of presence.

After reading my first essay on here—which was also on writing—my best friend Eslin had told me that it was maybe “too” perfect. Makes sense, I had thought, because I had spent ages editing it and packaging each sentence as beautifully as I could. So, this essay, today’s newsletter, is an attempt to undo that.

From the bottom of this page that I’ve finally reached,
Have a lovely Sunday,

Melis