What do bloggers write about when they have no subject to write about? I tend to write about nothing.

I do not know what other bloggers write about when they have nothing to write about, but I tend to write about nothing. Or about writing. Or about writing about nothing.

If you have been reading my blog for long, you probably know that I tend to write about whatever comes to mind. My subject might be some story of what happened to me the other day (like last week). Or it might be a piece I posted on DailyPrompt (a fair amount of those since I joined). Or it might be a piece about my writing process (lots of those). Or it might be a piece about nothing (a few of those too).

Yes, you read that right. I sometimes write about nothing.

Now, writing about nothing is not as easy as it might seem. I mean how can a writer dedicate a few hundred words to nothing? Really. It does not seem possible that a person could write lots about nothing. But I have. Just a few weeks ago would be just one case in point (Short and Sweet). And there was one a long time ago called Jibber Jabber. (I wrote that in honor of a friend and former colleague. Note where “former” is in the last sentence. In front of colleague, not in front of friend. Just saying.)

So how does a writer go about writing about nothing? I am not sure. I just do it. Then again, some people might think that I am not a writer. They might think that I am just a hack with a website. Which anybody can do. You can make websites out of thin air in just a few minutes. At least if the different hosting ads are to be believed.

At any rate.

I sometimes wonder if I am really a writer, but I suppose that I have a large enough body of work out there to suggest that I am. Which is nice. Not that anybody reads, mind you. But it is there for those who do. (Thank you faithful readers (both real and imaginary).)

I do need to say one other thing before I finish writing about nothing. I have been putting off blogging until the last minute lately because I have been enjoying writing little DailyPrompt pieces. I enjoy putting together little complete stories for those prompts. I do not write pieces for all of the prompts, mind you. But I do enjoy writing for them. (By the way, I have a piece I am saving for Halloween. I wrote it a while back, but I enjoyed it. And I think it is entertaining. I know Halloween is a ways away, but I hope you are waiting with bated breath.)

Okay. I must say this before I sign off for the week. Writing about nothing is not as easy as it sounds. Oh sure, you can just go off on a stream of consciousness, but that tends to stick to one subject. No. To write about nothing, you really need to write about a bunch of little somethings and keep them as separate as possible (or keep them together somehow). Then, in the end, just say, “Violà!”

And that is how you write about nothing.

Violà!

It might sound crazy, but I inadvertently sold one of my books a couple weeks ago.

I am the first to admit that I am not a very good self-promoter. Some people do not even know that I have written over 2 dozen books and have them on Amazon. Even people that I have known for years do not know. But that is because I am the writer, not the promoter. Even though as a self-published author, I need to be both. But I am not. At least not usually. And rarely in person.

So it was an odd thing that I sold a book to a person I had just met. Sitting at a wedding reception, no less.

One of my aunts was getting married and I was sitting at a table with mostly family. There was also a couple there who I did not know at the time. (I will call them Adam and Mallory.) I asked them how they knew the bride and groom and other questions to get to know them a little bit. It was great finding out about their four kids and their school bus remodel. (How cool would that be?) It was wonderful finding out more about my aunt’s friends.

As Adam and Mallory told me more about themselves, they told me that they attend a church that meets in an old movie theater. I could not believe it.

I said:

“You’re not going to believe this, but I wrote a book that has a church that meets in an old movie theater. The people are living in a time when Christians are being persecuted in the United States. The book is titled The Church Underground.”

Or something like that. Knowing how I speak, it was certainly not that eloquent. (But that is another story.)

At any rate.

Next thing you know, Adam had his phone out and was asking me how to find the book. I just told him. Amazon. Michael Miyoshi. The Church Underground.

He said, “Found it. Done.”

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And just like that, I had a book sale that I had not even tried to make. He told me that he has spent more money on other silly stuff, so why not a book that somebody he just met wrote. Or something like that. He was surely more diplomatic and eloquent than that. But I understood. And I appreciated it.

Truth be told, I wish that all of my book sales were that easy. I wish that everybody who read my books gave me a review. Any review. (Good, bad, or ugly.) And I wish that they would tell others about my books. Because I am definitely not a great book promotor. (A blog post would count if more than just a few people read it. Thank you my few faithful readers (both real and imaginary).)

I hope that Adam and Mallory are enjoying my book. And I hope that maybe someday I could make other inadvertent book sales. Or maybe I can just become a better self-promoter. (Yeah, right.)

Happy birthday, America! Two-hundred and fifty years and counting. Woo hoo!

It is interesting that we celebrate Independence Day on the Fourth of July when the document was adopted but not yet signed. (Apparently, it was signed in August of that year. Who knew?) Still, the date is on the document, so I guess it makes sense.

The document itself makes sense too.

Most people remember the beginning of the second paragraph:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I do not know why, but I tend to remember the part after the first clause of the first paragraph:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people…

And yes, both sections that I have quoted are written as they are written in the document. Capitalization, spelling, and even commas. (Apparently, Jefferson and the other authors did not like Oxford commas. Who knew?)

And, by the way, I actually do know why I know the first part of the Declaration of Independence. It was a question asked a long time ago. Like a trivia question: You know the first words of the Constitution (We the people), but do you know the first words of the Declaration of Independence? Or something like that. I did not know the words at the time, but I did after that. They just stuck. “When in the course of human events…”

But I digress.

People might think that the Declaration of Independence is just a bunch of words, but it took blood, sweat, and tears to make those words stick. It took years to back up this profound document. Years to make this country free. I know that even now it takes blood, sweat, and tears to keep it that way.

Now, I know that I have not really said much, but I would like to leave you with one last quote. George Washington said:

“The people must remain ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants.”

That saying is as true today as it was then. Which is why we must remember that freedom always has a cost.

Happy birthday, America! May we, your citizens, remember that we have a responsibility to keep this country free. To honor those who came before us and to bless those who come after us.

Believe it or not, sometimes writing gets in the way of writing. At least it does for me.

There are times when I am supposed to write my blog post, but instead of writing it, I do some other writing. Like yesterday.

Yesterday, I was going to get my blog post ready for my #ThursdayThoughts preview, but instead I wrote a piece of fiction for DailyPrompt. Which is not a bad thing, mind you. Unless, of course, the piece is bad. It might have been, but I will let other people decide whether my stuff is good or not.

At any rate.

The thing is that sometimes I am just procrastinating and sometimes I just have something else that just needs to get written. There is some project or some prompt or some idea that just must get put down on paper. Or placed on the internet. Or somehow acknowledged that it is important even if I am not going to write it quite yet. Which is itself an interesting thought.

I know that thoughts and ideas are not beings. They have no life of their own. And yet, there are times when I wonder. I wonder how I get these ideas for writing. Sometimes, I just write about what has happened in my life. Like today. But there other are times when I get an idea for a story or blog post or poem or song or whatever sort of writing that will just not leave me alone. I need to get the idea or story or whatever writing out of my brain and into some sort of storage system. I need to put pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard or the idea will not leave me alone. Which is kinda what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, I was looking at the DailyPrompt prompts and found one that needed to be written. It might have even been the one that was for that day. I do not remember. In fact, I do not even remember what I wrote. Which is something that I often do. I write it and forget it. (Which is a completely different story.)

You might think that this is just a way to procrastinate, but I do not think so. That is what chess is for. If I want to proecrastinate, I just play chess. (Again. A completely different story.)

No. I was not procrastinating yesterday when I was writing for a prompt (even though I said above that I might have been). I just had an idea that had to be written. I could not get my blog post ready because I was writing something else. Which brings me back to the beginning (without that much substance in between).

There are times when one part of my writing life must get put on the back burner for a different part of my writing life. Sometimes my book writing or my prompt writing or some other sort of writing takes precedence over my blog writing. And that is okay. At least I am not just procrastinating. At least it is just one part of my writing getting in the way of another.

It happens more often that I would like to admit, but sometimes I leave my blog post to the last minute. So since that has happened this week, I will make it short and sweet.

Now, I could say something pithy about good things come in small packages or that you ought to be able to say something in less words what you can say in more. But I am not going to do that. (Even though I already did, technically.) Instead, I am just going to write whatever I think and call it good. And that will be that. Short and sweet. And maybe to a point.

I was actually going to write about writing being fairly easy. At least sometimes, but I decided that I needed to be shorter than a quick essay about writing. (And yes, I know that saying something about being shorter leaves me open to all sorts of comments about height. Comment on.) So what to write that is short and sweet?

Well, I suppose that I really have nothing to write about. Which is no big deal, right? I mean, I write about nothing all the time. Or at least it seems like it. I am sure I have written about nothing way more than I would like to admit. Which is surely a problem. At least if you want to keep readers. Which is not necessarily a problem for me. After all, besides those few faithful readers (both real and imaginary), I do not have much here that will either attract new readers or scare off old readers. (And by old readers, I do not mean age. Sheesh. It seems that I am having to qualify my statements a lot. Thanks, Marc.)

By the way, Marc is a real reader. He might not read my posts all that often anymore, but he used to tease me about some of my posts. Many of my posts. Which at least told me that he was reading. And he likes to trap me with my own words. Like when I say something stupid. Which is more often than I would like.

By the way (again), I noticed that I open sentences with “which” quite a bit. Which could be a problem. After all, if the grammar police were out in force, they would surely give me a citation for having phrases rather than sentences. Which is okay. I am not worried about the grammar police. I used to worry. But not anymore.

(By the way, a third time, the picture of the echidna has nothing to do with the post. It just came as a picture for short. Who knew?)

Okay. Well, I seem to have run off the rails this morning. But I guess that is what happens when you just want to put out a blog post that is short and sweet.