The blank page

The blank page syndrome. Feared by writers of fiction and non-fiction alike. Being in front of an empty page, or computer screen, and thinking that it is fated to remain that way for ever and ever… Searching for inspiration, or for ideas that will not come. Not managing to write a single interesting, or even coherent, sentence. 

This often happens to me when I want to write short stories. I love to read short stories. I’d love to be able to write incisive, gripping, short stories. I even have ideas for short stories, but when I try to write one… I am met by a blank page. I have only ever completed a couple of short stories since I started to write and I’m beginning to think that the short format does not suit me that well. I need 160,000 words to express myself… 

Yet it does not mean that I escape the blank page when I write my novel(s). Inspiration and ideas are like a flowing river, running, running, and then, suddenly, sometimes without warning, or without any apparent reason, it dries out. And I’m stuck in the middle of, say, Chapter 5, realizing that the story has become stagnant, and that the characters are going round in circles, and that though I know what happens to them next, I do not know how to get them out of the situation they’re in, whatever it is. And I stop writing, and I look at the messy pile of paper (hundreds of loose sheets, some numbered, some not, loosely held together) that is my first draft and I wonder: why on earth did I waste so much time writing this? It’s going nowhere! 

When that happens, the trick is to go on writing, anything, even something very silly. And there is a magical thought I find very helpful, because it is so liberating: “this can always be edited later” (aka “write all the nonsense you like, writing is the fun part, why bother about the boring one – grammar, syntax, a coherent plot – today when you can do so on another day?”). This usually work and I plod on with my writing, even if it is something of a battle. Or, if I’m really, really stuck, I let my story rest for a few days, weeks (or more…), leaving it to mature (like cheese!), until I have a new idea, or I come to understand that some of the characters aren’t really as I thought they were, and that this is why I’m stuck. 

I had blank page moments when writing As Winter Came and Went. I did manage to fight them off and actually completed my novel!

Yet is a blank page necessarily something negative, to be feared and avoided? A blank page is a blank canvas. A blank page is a world to be discovered. No, it is a world to be created. Yes, it is daunting, but also inspiring. A blank page is the freedom to create, the freedom to express yourself. There are two sides to it. On one is the absence of ideas. On the other an opportunity for them to emerge. Duality. Complementarity, maybe. A test for writers. A challenge, to accept, not avoid. 

And you can also see the blank page as the only means your novel has to tell you you’re not going in the right direction. Is there always a reason for the blank page? I think it is the case for me. If I can’t go on with my writing, it’s that something is wrong with it, that the direction I want to take isn’t the right one. The blank page that stares at me then forces me to stop and think. So perhaps writers should learn to love blank pages for the lessons they teach them.