Staring at the Blank Page

If you take a writing class, here is a tip from me. Don't ever start your assignments cold. Like exercising, you need to warm up. Stretch those little writing brain muscles. You want them to build up strong, not snap and go insane. Save your sanity. Start writing nothingness, or horribly, or for fun. If music helps, bring on the music. If silence helps, either soundproof your room and your ears, or go to the library. Or move to the middle of a forest, or Antarctica. But get yourself writing somehow.

Take at least five minutes to get into it. If you just don't know where to start, then start by writing that. I find that sometimes I come to my empty page with the whole day on my tongue, or annoying snippets of things just bouncing around in my head space. So get that out and onto the page (just have another notebook or file called Writing Warm ups or Word Vomit). Address it, don't just push it out of the way. Address it in a way where your brain is okay with letting it go elsewhere so you can focus on what you need to: your assignment. And once you feel that the words are starting to come as liquid, you are ready to move on.

Now if it's twenty minutes later and you are still struggling with getting words out, it may be anxiety about the actual project. But as long as you are getting words out a little easier than when you first came to the page, you can move forward and see where it goes. 

When I'm really clunky like this: anxious or having a hard time getting anything out, I try to do my assignment sooner rather than later. I do that because I might want to try a writing exercise on my own. You would be amazed at how many writing prompt books there are out there if you are short on ideas. 

If you are still clunky after that, then leave and return later (a few hours or even a day later), do a writing warm up and try again. And believe it or not, it is easier the second time. And even easier the third time. And soon your writing warm ups are about two lines long, if that. Sometimes only a sentence and you are flowing along like a river, caught up in its mighty current.

Now you can jump into your assignment. Normally what comes out now is far better than if you tried to start cold. I cannot tell you how many times I banged my head against a wall with nothing in my head for an assignment but desperately wanting to write. It's there, you're probably just clogged. So get the writing clog out and then go to the assignment.

Whether you look at it as a clog or as warm ups, all the great authors will tell you that writing anything is better than writing nothing. And the more you write, the better you will get. 

Stephen King gives a great tidbit of advice in his book On Writing. Give me a minute to grab his book because it's that important: "Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page." (p. 106)

He even emphasizes that last part in italics in his book. And you need to read his book to understand what he means by that. Or you need to be a writer. Or you simply need to write long enough to understand the meaning. Or you just aren't meant to be a writer. I don't think I was ready to be a writer for many years. I thought a little effort would give me what I needed. But what I needed was a good kick in the pants of reality of what life is like without writing. And now I get it. 

Now don't take this the wrong way, Mr. King, or Stephen, or however you'd like to be called. As much as I appreciate your words, I did enjoy Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury more than your book. Sorry, but maybe it's because he speaks my language more. Or maybe because I'm a huge nerd when it comes to Ray Bradbury's books. I like your books, Mr. King. I love his books. Sorry, you scarred me with It. So you deserve it.