Writing about nothing

During her time alive she wasn't as acclaimed as her husband, but after Sylvia Plath's suicide her works became ever popular, twisted and dark yet somehow beautiful, the grasp elements of life that other authors allude to, but never nail. She wrote once, "Everything in life is writable.... if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." This quote is very true, yet here I sit, wanting to write with nothing to write on. I could do the typical regurgitation of my day, the sad fact that this morning in my room, leggings and boots seamed to match, bout outside in natural light....the two shades clashed; maybe the fact that I decided that water that is filtered and pour into a glass glass is better then flittered water in the plastic cup; or how my new obsessive song is "half of my heart" by john mayer. but even with all the guts and strength and determination to squash self doubt of those things being unwritable...i still fall short with anything to really write about. But surely Plath, one of the most influential writers of my life, had some teaming wisdom behind this statement, or was it just a frivolous writer spouting off words that formed a very compelling sentence? but when reading her works, the reader cannot help but notice how perfectly her work reflected this statement. She could write about the most basic things, and somehow you, the reader, saw a whole new perspective on it, that or her works were so complex and twisted that the meaning spoke different to every person that glanced across the page. to me, the first thing of hers i read, was her "daddy" poem. Though this doesn't reflect my relationship with my father, I am very blessed to have the father that i have, but her words, those fantastic descriptive words, burned, and i had no clue why they burned, they just did. and looking back, it seems a strange thing to have felt such a connection with this poem, it was a simple yet powerful poem, and when one understands the full nature of the poem the tragicness of its entirety is felt. These two stanzas were the ones that i felt the most....

"Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now."

these mirrors her relationship with her father. it is to my understanding that he was never there, yet she always tried to gain his approval, till he died. She overdosed on pills on her first attempt at suicide, to get back to her father, that somehow "even the bones would do" that maybe in death she still could be in touch with him and he would in turn love her. the second stanza is showing her relationship with her husband, who she fell in love with because he was so much like her father, yet after seven years, he left her. there is such power behind the words, and they fall heavily and with the right leverage to make anyone feel a burn.

this poem does in fact show her writing about something, the subject matter is not just "anything" its pointed. Yet not everything in life is such. there are things that one can never write about, and there are things that you can write about way too much. last night, i was talking with a friend, and the subject of writing things that no one else would understand came up. some of the best writings of a writer are the ones they have tucked away, hidden from the world, not allowing them to be seen. the most writable things, are the most painful things. some of my own personal best will never be read by others, they are the journal entries where thoughts over take and spill out with out a filter. when writing for others, theres a certain veil between you and you audience. this veil holds back the emotions, and the painful things, but yet, true compelling writing has no veil, and for those who can write without inhibition, those are the writers who stir and move an audience with what they say. Plath had no veil, she wrote unfiltered and unaffraid. this is the cause for the burn.