The Blah, Blah, Blah Method: How to Start Journaling When You're Stuck

Blah, blah, blah.

That's what my teacher told me to write. Over and over, on a blank page, until something real showed up.

I was sixteen.
I thought she'd lost it.

Her name was Miss Hicks, and this was her actual assignment for our creative-writing class. "Don't know what to write? Then write blah, blah, blah until you can't stand it anymore."

So I sat there.
Pen on paper.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, feeling like the biggest idiot in the room. And then my hand kind of took over. It wrote this is so stupid, why am I even doing this — and then, one beat later, out came the thing I'd actually been chewing on all week.

It had been hiding right under the boredom the whole time. I just had to outlast my own eye-rolling to reach it.

That trick stopped being a classroom joke that same year, when I was in that same writing class and had a bad car wreck. I couldn't find a single word for what it did to me. So I didn't wait for the perfect sentence. I wrote blah, blah, blah until the real one broke through.

It did.
It always does.

Here's what nobody tells you: people don't quit journaling because they're "not writers." They quit because they sit down, stare at a blank page, and assume the first thing out of the pen has to be good.

It doesn't.
It's not supposed to be anything.

The first few lines are just you clearing your throat.

Here's what it actually looks like on the page. Pick up a pen and write this, exactly, no thinking:

blah blah blah this is silly blah blah why am I doing this I have nothing to say blah blah okay fine the one thing is —

That dash? That's where your real entry starts. Nine times out of ten, the sentence right after "the one thing is" is the one you sat down to write and didn't know it.

You can't get there by staring.
You get there by moving the pen.

So here's your one small thing this week. Set a timer for two minutes. Start with blah, blah, blah. Don't stop your hand until it rings — even if the whole page is junk. Junk is allowed here. Junk is the method. You cannot fail at writing nonsense on purpose.

Then do one more thing for me.

Hit reply and tell me: what were you taught, somewhere along the way, about writing? A teacher's red pen. A grade that stuck to you. Someone who said you "weren't a words person." I read every reply myself, and I'm collecting these. One line is plenty.

Deep breaths. Just write.

Krystal

P.S. Next Thursday: the journal entry that introduced me to my husband — a few weeks before I met him. Yes, really. The first-date story is a disaster, and I'm telling you all of it.