My favorite question to ask fellow writers is:
How does a blank page make you feel?
I find it to be a creative Rorschach Test: an individual’s answer reveals their unconscious beliefs, fears, and prejudices about themselves and their craft.
For this particular quandary people usually fall into one of two camps:
Camp 1: The lucky optimist who views the blank page as fertile ground to fill with thoughts and ideas… a representation of the endless possibilities that writing offers.
Camp 2: The neurotic pessimist who sees the blank page as an empty void. One that can never be filled, and spits their deepest anxieties back at them.
Which camp do you belong to?
Unfortunately, I find myself in the latter camp. One of, I think, a silent majority of writers who are both titillated and terrified by the blank page.
It’s the creative equivalent of Agoraphobia. Too much space means there is nowhere to hide from your inner thoughts and neuroses.
Yesterday I started a writing challenge called the Anxious Writer’s Power Hour. In the challenge I gave myself a strict deadline of one hour to write an article.
What you’re reading is my first entry. I have 10 minutes left on the clock so I don’t have the luxury of going into more details…
But my hope for the project is that it tempers my anxiety about writing. That setting time constraints can make the process less overwhelming.
And most importantly, that I can inch my way towards Camp 1 and have an amicable relationship with the beloved, and often maligned blank page.