The Blank Page
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I have a tie-dye of stories inside me. True and imagined. Sentences stir and swirl, waiting patiently to be freed. Words collide and commingle. Ideas dance. Beginnings and ends twirl and curl. Characters arrive and settle, speaking softly of what they will do. Conflicts swell and subside. Colors crescendo, splash and fade.
Into blinding blankness.
The blank page. It is a thing, yes. A rectangle of paper. A bright screen, unmarred. But it is also more. The blank page is emptiness. Void. Nothingness.
But the blank page is also space. Possibility. A fresh start. A canvas for becoming.
And so. We can choose how we see life’s blank pages. And this decision? This choice? It is important. Not just for writers. For all of us. Because life is full of blank pages. Pages of incandescent white waiting for color, for texture, for story. It’s up to us to fill these pages, isn’t it? If we don’t fill the pages of our own stories, won’t someone else?
Today, I sit here. Facing another blank page. Another day. It stretches before me like most others, benevolent and bare. I will fill it with snuggles and smiles and tears and tantrums and errands and dreams.
Today, I sit here. Facing a pile of blank pages. My next book. It sits before me, whispering words that are scary and soothing.
Write. These are your pages to fill. This is your story to tell.
Today, I will do it. I will throw paint. I will write words. I will fill pages.
It is that simple.
(It is never that simple.)
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- Do you agree that there is something inspiring and unsettling about life’s blank pages?
- Do you agree that if we don’t fill our own pages ourselves – with words and stories of our choosing – someone else will?
- How will you fill the blank page of your day?
- How do you hope to fill the blank pages of your life?
- As a writer, are you daunted by the blank page?
Yes I absolutely agree that someone else will fill our pages if we don’t!
Good post! You have a lovely writing style.
Thanks and welcome, Di! There is something important about realizing that we must take ownership over our own lives and pages, I think. And shouldn’t our stories truly be ours?
I have to write as fast as I can, without thinking. Otherwise it all becomes too scary for me.
Dive in my friend!
I feel the exact same way. I call my drafts “speed drafts” and I write until I am dizzy. It is when I stop to think and rearrange that I get stuck. Really stuck.
I don’t find the blank page daunting actually, I find it incredibly freeing. Endless possibility, endless potential.
Sometimes I write in a blank document, actually, and then just copy&paste back into the larger story I’m working on. I think working on a single project, with several “blank page starts” can help, because it keeps it from becoming too narrow, too tunnel-visioned, set in itself. It allows for the unexpected to come in without being “forced.”
Or maybe this is just how I work!
I have been known to do this too. To write a new scene in a new space and then paste it in. There is something very liberating about having a clean space in which to get started with something.
I so understand! Paint your picture with words!!
Yes. Isn’t this what all of us bloggers are really doing? Painting our existential pictures with words?
Blank pages will always be both inspiring and frightening. Perhaps more frightening at certain times than inspiring. But doesn’t the fear spur us on, in a way?
Yes. Fear. It is terrible and so important all at once. Some of us are paralyzed without fear, without anxiety. I think it would be interesting if we all looked back on our biggest and best decisions in life and noted the role of fear in those experience… I would wager that fear played some part, however obscure, in all of them…
I have always adored a new notebook or a blank document – just ready and waiting to be filled with words, so full of promise.
Of course there are the days when you have not one original thought in your head and you’d rather be facing a firing squad than a blank sheet of paper…
But I think for most writers those days are only drops in the bucket. At least I hope so!
There is something magical about something that is waiting to be filled with beauty – a page, a vase, a shelf. There are indeed those days though when a blank page is nothing but a mocking reminder that we have nothing to give. Most days, I have something. It is not always eloquent, but it is something. And I relish the existence of mere words, of ideas however sloppy and unformed. Every day is not about bolts and brilliance.
What I love is a truly blank page. Not a blank page that will, by default, be filled with all of life’s to do’s. After the laundry is done, the dogs are walked, the house is cleaned, the bills are paid, the exercise is logged and the drycleaning is picked up – THAT’S when the page is really blank. And that’s when the fun really starts. Those moments don’t come often, but when they do they are magic.
(But sometimes I don’t wait for all those things to be done to treat the day as a blank slate. Sometimes you just have pretend your page is blank and not worry about the things that are waiting for you.)
Love this. Is there ever a truly blank page? Or are our days and pages filled with shadows of what will, and must, transpire? I do think there is something so important about pretending from time to time that the page is blank and the road is open. Are we truly free if we are forever at the mercy of the details that speck our lists, the goals that fill our minds?
The blank page is always a fresh start, but getting those words down can be such a challenge. I try to let go and write, knowing that there will be several revisions to follow.
I try to do this as well. To just get the words down. I have grown to trust that I will be able to work through them later, to make my ideas and characters and ideas clearer with time. But there is an undeniable barrier between imagination and expression. I think any writer who pretends there isn’t is lying to herself a bit.
Oh, and it is all about revision, isn’t it? What is life but the editing of our story?
Sometimes I have this urge to just pick up and move somewhere new. There is something exciting about that, the idea that you can start fresh.
OTOH, as Harry Chapin said, “you can run 10,000 miles and still stay where you are.”
I don’t have that urge, but I envy that urge. My older sister is contemplating picking up her family of five and moving to a brand new part of the country where they know not a soul. I think there is something so amazing about this, about this creation of a blank page within the context of one’s life story. But alas. I am so different. I just moved into a home two blocks from my childhood digs. Blank page? Not so much.
Love that quote. So so true.
Oh girl. You have no idea how much it just helped me to think of that blank page as benevolent. So thanks for the image.
Now let’s go all Jackson Pollack!
xo elizabeth
ps. still planning on writing that review, just have been SWAMPED. I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s up. xo
Yes, the blank page is what it is. Blank, benevolent, waiting for our mark. I think we need to remind ourselves of this because we have a way of creating demons where they don’t really exist.
No apologies allowed! Look forward to reading the review whenever it happens
As a writer and an artist a blank page presents itself differently to me than a blank canvas. My first scribbled words are less daunting to me than my first scribbled lines of contour or colour. I suppose it is always easier to go to a blank page that to go to a new canvas. As a writer, you can cut and paste and save your written as you edit, knowing that you can always go back to initial elements. As an artist, artwork seems to always move forward and once you have placed those elements of lines, colours and shapes on the canvas, you can’t really go back to where you were before.
It would be interesting to know if other writer-artists see their blank pages the same as their blank canvases.