I have a love hate relationship with blank pages. As a writer, the
blank page should be my best friend; an endless vat of possibilities, just
waiting for me to pull creativity from its depths and splash it all over its
surface! But as a person, the blank page terrifies me. Somehow, the thing that
should encourage me and give me freedom cripples me, and stops all creativity.
Over the holiday, I made it my mission to break the blank page
barricade—I was tired of having shackles on my wrists, clanking against the
bottom of my laptop whenever I opened a Word Doc. So, I set a goal. Nothing
fancy or over the top; just a very humble goal of writing 500 words a day.
Simple, doable, and productive…right?
Wrong.
It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced while writing. No
longer could I wait for inspiration to strike, hastily scratching ideas onto a
page to formalize later—when I felt like it. Now I was bound to my desk for
hours at a time, waiting. Waiting for some suave, smooth talker to glide into
my head and whisper sweet nothings in my ear, preferably in the form of witty, fast
paced dialogue. Obviously, he was on holiday, too. Instead, I found an
overweight drunkard, stumbling around in an ugly Christmas sweater with whiskey
on his breath and vomit in his beard, barely able to hold his girth for more
than five seconds.
I judged every thought, critiqued every sentence, and deleted words
quicker than I could write them. For the first few weeks, I barely squeaked
past 500 words, some days filling in “that”s and “had”s just to hit the mark (shame
on those foul, dirty words). I felt discouraged more times than I felt proud of
what I wrote, and I questioned my worth as a writer. Surely, no one would ever
want to read what I wrote—even I could hardly look at it.
One night, in the comfort of my writing room, I sobbed uncontrollably into
my keyboard. On this particular day, I had shared a bit of my 500 words with a
friend, and didn’t get the exact reaction I had been hoping for. I skulked to
my room, slammed my door, and barricaded myself to the same four walls for
nearly eight hours. And still, nothing.
A small knock rapped at my door, my husband bounding through the frame,
obviously a little concerned about the vicious wails coming from behind it. I
muttered out some unintelligible grouping of sniffles and syllables; to this
day, I still don’t know how he managed to make out what I was saying.
And then, he said exactly what I needed to hear, “Just write, dang-it!”
The sarcastic Sally living inside me wanted to scream “DUH!” But then I
sat and thought about it. Just write. Don’t think, just write. Don’t worry
about what other people will say, just write.
So I did. I stopped thinking about what everyone would say or think or
critique. Stopped thinking about whether or not it was publishable. Stopped
defining myself and my worth by the thoughts of others. It wasn't about them. It was about me, my
world, and my passion for writing.
I cornered drunken Uncle Fred in my mind, sobered him up with a hefty
splash to the face, and sat him down right next to me. We were going to write,
dang-it, and no one’s imaginary opinions were going to stop me.
From there, it was like butter. I wrote to make myself smile, not to
please the wishes of other people. I wrote what I thought was truthful, not
what I thought other people wanted to hear. And I wrote because I was
passionate, not because I wanted to write the next bestseller.
As Steven King would say, I became a storyteller, not a status seeker.
At that moment, I became a writer. On my own terms. In my own way. For my own
happiness.
And oddly enough, that’s when other people started to like it, too.
