Blank Page Jitters

For no small number of us, there is a moment when we first open that blank document or pristine notebook and the enormity of what we’re about to do rises like the white cliffs of Dover. The power and potential is overwhelming. It’s terrifying.

Maybe a part of you whispers, “Start it tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.” Maybe you suddenly remember laundry, or vacuuming or errands that desperately need running. If you’re being productive, it doesn’t count as procrastination, right?

You’re about to create something from nothing. You’re about to take this thought – this abstract concept in your head – and translate it, however, inaccurately, to something other people can read and interpret for themselves. And this story of yours is going to need a beginning, middle, and end, plot twists and pinch points, believable characters that have their own arcs and developments . . . it’s a lot to face.

I had an art teacher in high school who told us to make random marks on any new paper or surface, just to break the expectations and inhibitions that tend to crop up in the face of a blank slate.

It usually works, too. At least, it does for me.

But not always. And even when I’m not at the start of a project, I can find it overwhelming. The pen goes down. I find excuses and distractions that keep me away.

The problem is that the whole story won’t just spring out, fully and perfectly formed with the click of a pen, and some eternally naive part of me keeps expecting that it might. Expectations and frustrations abound.

When I’m facing the whole project as one monstrous entity, I get absolutely nothing done. Times like this, the tally system (which is still working amazingly, by the way) saves my ass. All it requires is a word. One single word. One word and I’ve written for the day. It counts. But if I’ve written one word, the second isn’t any harder.

There’s a lot more to crafting a story and tackling the million-and-one problems and complications that come go with that, but at its most basic, writing a story just requires putting a word on the page at a time.

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