Ed Pacht on How Nothing is Something

I recently received this message from Ed Pacht, a regular reader, and I am posting it with his permission.

Alice,

 

In the course of writing a response to that good article on workshops, it occurred to me that you might find some value in this piece. I've been trying to write every day (today was day #434) and some days have been without much inspiration. Some have a kind of writer's block, and that is what I make myself write about. I call the results, "Nothing Poems." This is one of those, which will be gathered together into a chapbook entiled, "Nothing: Poems about Not Writing Poems."

Why do I write?

I have to write.
When words within my head
jostle one another for a place
upon the paper or the screen
that blankly sits before me,
I have to write.
I have to set them down,
to let them speak,
to say the things they wish to say:
profound thoughts of highest wisdom,
incoherent babblings of an empty mind,
something worthwhile to be said,
or not.
I have to write.
I want to write.
It is in writing that I find myself,
whether what I find is what I’d like to find,
or whether what I find will make me cringe,
and wish that I were not the one I find.
I want to write.
I want to put my thoughts in print.
I want to share them as I read aloud,
and, I guess, to share with others what I am,
but why?
Am I really of much interest to those others?
Am I really worth my own attention?
Often do I ask myself these questions;
seldom do I find a worthy answer.
Do I think my writing to be worth the sharing?
Is it honest to be saying that I do?
Probably not,
but …
I have to write.

--ed pacht