Member-only story
Blank page syndrome
Bring play into your creative process . . .
Make a mark. Put down a word. Throw paint on an empty canvas. Do anything to get started to violate the blankness staring back at you. Make a mess, then clean it up and you’ve got something. But we’ve been told so many always and never statements. Always start your writing with an outline as though you already know what you want to say but what if the very act of writing allows you to figure out what you think and want to say? That’s why I write my Notes from the Walking Head. To figure out what I think. And to uncover false beliefs I’ve been carrying around.
But why fiction? Maybe to discover why characters do what they do. To live through them from the limited lenses we bring to the page. Now I have words on a page and even though I don’t have an outline or wasn’t sure where I wanted to go today or maybe I’m not even sure where I want to take this. Except to keep putting down words, one after the other.
The first stroke or spill of paint on the canvas can help. Or a pencil mark on a page. I like the zentangle philosophy as a kind of meditation: you make a light scribble on the page and then fill in the shapes with various patterns without trying to make anything recognizable. No erasing allowed. No mistakes, just marks. In the end you’ve got a dynamic abstract object. What about with words? Do we always need…
