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Here is how to write a column about absolutely nothing at all

By Chuck Hunt - Editor | Sep 15, 2024

It finally happened.

After writing a column pretty much every single week for 52 years, it finally happened. I sat down at my computer for a while and finally said to myself, “I got nothin’.”

Nothing came to me. No ideas. Nada.

Well, yes, I did have some ideas. But every single one of them ended when I said to myself, “I’ve written about that before.”

The presidential election? Done that, several times. I learned over time, you are just not going to change anyone’s mind. They might agree with me or disagree with me, but that is just the way it is.

The weather? Wow, I have really done that way too many times. And besides, the weather lately has been pretty darn nice.

My personal opinions about some local issues? Yep. Again, I am not sure I ever changed anyone’s mind. But at least it is true that I have gotten some things off my chest in the past, and it felt pretty good doing it.

The Minnesota Vikings? Sure, that was a definite idea that crossed my mind as I sipped my coffee this morning. Yes, they did win their first game. Yes, they did look pretty good, I will admit. But one game does not a season make. And besides, this weekend they play San Francisco, not the awful New York Giants.

People using their cell phones way too much? Escaping the hectic world by going to my camp that is off the grid? My recent trip to Cape Cod? Nope, been there, done that, and wrote that.

How about my old reliable, the Cheers and Jeers column? Well, I had planned on doing that next week. This week I have not been in a cheery or jeery mood it seems.

My 2,634 columns over the years have been on a wide variety of topics. And yes, a few times they have won awards.

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s they were a whole lot more “preachy.” I mean, I was a whole lot younger and had been in college and had some pretty good ideas on how the world needed to change and my columns were kind of written in a “know it all” sort of way.

Now that I am older, I hate it when young people think they know it all. They are just little “whippersnappers” who don’t know as much as they think they do. However, I do have to admit that I sometimes have to ask them how something on my phone, computer or TV works.

During my 23 years of writing a column every week in Tyler, Minnesota, the name of the newspaper was, and is, the Tyler Tribute. I named my column Tributaries. It seemed like a fitting name because the columns I wrote then were pretty meandering and sometimes covered a variety of topics all in one column.

And sometimes they were on just one topic, whenever I got fired up about something. Or at least, when I thought I had a great idea of what to write about.

Unlike this week, when, as I mentioned before, “I got nothin.'”

Over the years I have “forced” some others to write a column. Here in Blue Earth, I usually have the reporters write a column once a month. Often, they struggle to write one just once a month and marvel at the fact that I try to write one every week. In Tyler, the editor there, Mark Wilmes, was forced by me to write a column when he first started working at the Tyler Tribute many years ago. Mark had no newspaper experience when he first started as a sports reporter, then reporter, then editor, at the newspaper.

He struggled at first, but then embraced it, and his “Off the Mark” column is excellent and has won quite a few awards. And, he writes it every week. He even wrote it from a hospital bed even when I told him he did not have to.

Other reporters who have worked with me over the years have had that same experience. Some fear it at first, but most of them eventually embrace it. And, the first time they hear from someone that “I loved your column in the paper this week,” they are usually hooked and actually look forward to writing one.

Of course, over the years I have had people tell me they like my column and look forward to reading it. And that was not just my mom telling me that.

Of course, not everyone who reads what I have written has liked it. Sometimes I have hit a nerve and I get a, shall we say, “negative” response.

But, you learn to take the praise and the criticism alike, and then move on to think about what you should write about in the next column.

Oh, hey, I just had a great idea of what I can write about in this week’s column. I can just erase everything I just wrote and start over again. Or not. Maybe I will just save this great idea for a future column. But I better write down the idea before I forget what it was. What was it again? Oh yeah, it was to write a column about trying to write a column about nothing.

Oops, I guess I just did that.