I have Nothing to Say

“Why don’t you write anymore?” she asked me.

“Because… I have nothing to say.”

Never tempt the universe like that.

I used to write all the time when I was growing up. English was always my favourite lesson. And the fuel for my defiant streak. Words are powerful. You can use them to change your fate.

I have a degree in English Lit. I devour novels within a day. I have opinions about semi-colons and the Oxford comma. But for years before I met him, I hadn’t written anything at all.

My Panther is a terrific story-teller. He has pacing and syntax that leaves me enthralled. It’s a big part of why I fell in love with him. He’s outwardly sensible – an engineer by trade – but he lives for stories. He got me into Terry Pratchett. And introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons (though I’ve not yet been brave enough to actually play).

So in February of 2026, I got brave and signed up for some sessions as part of the UK Ghost Story Festival. I had meant to go to the lectures. But some of the workshops intrigued me. And for the first time in a very long time, I was picking up a pen and doing the ‘yes and’ thing, and writing stories. (I also killed Tigger, but that’s a story for another day.)

I felt so much like me that weekend!

And in the breaks between sessions, I made a friend! J might be one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. She’s a screenwriter, and very much adventure-type – we connected over wassailing, talked about the connection between witchcraft and social-mobility, about humans as innate story-tellers.

Write, J encouraged me. About anything. Everything. But write.

When my Panther was admitted to the hospital, that first night when we’d been up for 48 hours and everything was happening too fast but also in a syrupy-slow way, I sat in a chair by his bed and held his hand while he dozed. And tiny snippets of life were happening around me. Little interactions given a different weight by our situation.

I felt compelled to write some of them down. To anchor myself into that moment, that space, that specific version of reality. A hospital. In the Midlands. In the middle of the night. On a Sunday.

Beeping. Rustling. Whispered conversations. A prayer in a language I don’t speak or recognise that wrapped around the whole ward like a blanket.

Quiet existence. A tiny pause in the onslaught of terror and grief. Horrifyingly beautiful – the “Ma” (間) or breath before the phrase.

All the things you never get to say.

Sophie Kinsella wrote in What Does It Feel Like?

I’m a novelist. I’m used to being God. I decide on the ending before I begin.

I’m not a novelist. I am Dangerously Convincing as my friend A was once Christened. I am used to using words to pin down reality – to contain and explain and signpost.

I know there’s no way out of this one. The chapters of my life with him in them are limited, and I’m not the one turning the pages.

But there’s some small comfort in writing it all down.