The blank page often is thought of as a curse. Writers bemoan it. They even wail about it. They fret and stew about the blank page. They worry about putting words on the page. They worry about not putting words on the page. They fear the blank page will haunt them for the rest of their lives. They wonder when the blank page will stop being such a bully and let them write. They wonder if they can stage a coup. They fear the blank page already knows their plans to rebel, so they hide. They avoid the blank page. They make a pot of coffee. They wash the dishes or fold the laundry. They pretend they can’t see the blank page from the corner of their eye, but they know it’s there, glowering, waiting.
What if that perspective were to change? What if writers were to stop viewing the blank page as a curse and to start seeing it as a gift? To see it as a promise? What would happen then? Would they begin to see the blank page as a necessary building block instead of a stumbling one? Would they view it as a painter views a fresh canvas, a thing with unforetold and possibly unforeseen possibilities? Would they take the initial steps of prepping that page as the artist preps a canvas? Would the prep work get them into the right frame of mind so that they could put words on the page? If they were to view that page as a canvas, would they be less afraid of placing words on the surface? Would they allow themselves to make mistakes and to be messy rather than to worry about keeping the surface clean?
Perhaps. Perhaps all that could happen, but it would require the writer to stop avoiding the blank page and to begin to make plans, not ones of the mutinous variety such as cleaning the house “just because” but ones that work with the blank page. The writer would have to transform her mind. The writer would have to train herself to think of the blank page as a promise rather than a curse.
Image: Adam Mulligan (CC BY NC SA 2.0)