Fear of a blank page. Any suggestions?

[MostlyLurks]

Hey All,

First time I've posted here. Back in my younger days - circa 1988-1992 - I was heavily involved in writing fiction and had reasonable ability to do so to my satisfaction.

At some point, that changed and I now have what I call "fear of the blank page". This is not what I'd call writer's block per se. WHEN I get to writing, I can cruise for long stretches, happily cranking away. I've had block before, which for me manifests itself as an inablity to properly write a particular character, scene, etc. It's the getting started that's the problem now - I get vapor locked just thinking about starting a new writing project, the work and time involved, the self-immolation I regularly endure as I criticize my work, etc.

Most often, this manifests itself in endless, pointless rewriting of just-completed sentences, paragraphs, pages. Write a paragraph, decide that this word or phrase needs polishing, hammer on that for a while, get it right, then decide some other part of the same paragraph needs the same treatment. Repeat until utter frustration sets in.

I've literally spent manic hours beating one paragraph down. I KNOW as I'm doing it that I should be moving forward, rather than lingering over something that can be changed later, but I just mentally can't go beyond it. This must be how OCD patients feel about closing a door "just right" or using exactly the right number of strokes when brushing their hair, etc. It's like a runaway train - I feel almost like I'm not fully in control of myself as I do it.

The end result is that I HATE writing now, just utterly hate it. At the same time, I want to do it because it's in my nature to write.

Anybody have a similar issue and/or any insight as to how to deal with it? Thanks!

Mostly

[Sanity Claws]

1. My suggestion -- crayons.

Crayons can fill up a lot of space. You can be monochromatic or multichromatic.

[MostlyLurks]

2. I have no idea what that means.

Beside which, crayon is hard to wipe from one's monitor.

Mostly

[Sanity Claws]

4. I thought you were using paper

You're right. Crayons are not good for the monitor. What about white-out? It comes in colors, you know. People have been known to use it on monitors, although I wouldn't advise it. ;)

[Kire]

16. BWAHAHAHA!

:rofl:

[petgoat]

12. The Countersuggestion to Crayons--3X5 Cards

Reduce the amount of space to fill up.

Both of them create a provisional space in which not everything has to
be perfect.

[blm]

3. I'm obviously not a writer, but had a long, major relationship with

a fairly wellknown writer.

He used to turn on the hot water in the tub and make a fuss over just the right amount of exquisite bubble bath and sink into the tub for a nice, long soak.

The whole ritual distracted him enough to relax and let the brain juice flow naturally.

He could take anywhere from 2 to 4 baths a day. He called it a date with Mr. Bubble.

heheh....it was so sweet.

[thereismore]

5. Use a text editor on your computer, resize the window down to 1 line. nt

[petgoat]

6. Some people turn off the computer monitor and just type. Computers

make editing so easy.

I can always write a "what this story is about" essay, and find I
conceive of scenes and lines and motifs in the middle of that.

I tend to write a lot more ideas for stories than actual stories. So if
something is not working I can just work on something else.

Anne Lamont says you just have to give yourself permission to write
crummy first drafts. I say you have to give yourself permission to
write crummy thirteenth drafts.

I wouldn't recommend alcohol 'cause of its obvious dangers, but some
find it helps.

[democrat in Tallahassee]

7. I think it is part of the creative process and you should just go with

it; it probably means you aren't ready to go forward and there is nothing wrong with revising--it sharpens your writing skills. I bet those paragraphs you worked on are really sharp.
I'm writing a dissertation and I tend to want to move forward before I'm ready; revising a lot slows me down and helps me think.

[DrRang]

8. Best two things I've heard . . .

were from Annie Lamott's book "Bird by Bird," her two most valuable bits of advice for writers.

1. You have permission to write shitty first drafts.

Boy, does this one take the pressure off.

2. Give yourself small assignments.

Like, all you have to do right now is describe how a character comes out of the door and walks across the porch. Or what the character's dog looks like. Or what the character says when buying K-Y Jelly at the drugstore. That's all. Whatever you do after that is the next little assignment.

Of course, who am I to talk? I'm cruising DU instead of finishing an article for the local alternative weekly.

[wryter2000]

10. More from Lamotte

The one inch square. Fill a one inch square and move on. If you think you have to fill a whole page, you'll be paralyzed.

I have an AlphaSmart. www.alphasmart.com. The screen is only a few lines big, to it takes lots of work to obsess with what you've already written.

[Ready4Change]

9. Just write gibberish for a while.

Just spew it onto the page. Don't even take time to think, or correct grammar or spelling. Vomit through your fingers. (Don't think on that one too long.)

It works for me. Gets rid of those heeby-jeeby hobgoblins who claim that everything I write must be GOLDEN at the very moment they are set on the page.

Hogwash. Everything I write can only be improve through editing. Nothing is perfect at first. Get the fingers moving, let the ideas flow out on their own, then go back and clean out the crap.

Writing this way can be a lot like sculpting. First drafts are freshly quarried rock. By editing, you chip away all the stuff you don't want to keep, until you've got nothing left except your statue.

[petgoat]

11. First drafts are freshly quarried rock.

I like to think of it that way, too. Drafts and essays on strategy
generate the raw material you will glue together and carve away to
shape the final work.

I find composing with a soft pencil disinhibiting; my messy scrawl
emphasizes the provisional nature of the draft and provides a sense of
privacy--even I can't "read" it so much as remember what the words
are. As I cross out and replace my first stumbles, the handwritten
page soon becomes so messy that it's easy to assume that it's all
right. After all, I'm not going to hand copy it just to make sure
it's okay, am I?

Once it's in the computer I can start editing, and that's
disinhibiting too because you rarely agonize about adding to a draft.
Either you have an idea that seems worthwhile or you don't.

[jayctravis]

13. Don't face the formal blank page.

Others have made good suggestions about using cards or smaller paper with notes. It's always easier to start from notes.

I have two word-processors and a screenwriting word processor and yes; it's very hard to hit the blank page with its blinking cursor and be *brilliant* on command.

I almost never start in the word processor. I have this weird condition about "sullying" a pristine new page with something that might be wrong. I love blank books and have several beautiful ones but can't bring myself to write in them. This might be a form of the blank-page syndrome.

Start with a .txt document. If you're in windows, just right click and make a new document. Adjust the font so it's nice and big and easy to read and feels substantial and start playing. Turn on wordwrap too. Make notes. This is your scratch paper. I have them all over my desktop saved under cryptic names like "this is what Lamont says to her.txt" and "Thursday from work.txt" These often are junk but often can be cut and pasted together into a springboard that will eliminate that first blank page and set the ball rolling.

I also make a new folder for each project I think of in the My Documents folder and just toss these scraps in...usually I have several going and the little inspirations often don't warrant opening up a huge program.

[RoyGBiv]

14. A Blank Page

A blank page is God's way of letting us know it's not easy being God.

I don't have any advice to give that hasn't already been given. I understand completely what you're experiencing, and the only way I've found to handle it is just to write. It doesn't matter if it is crap or what the medium is. Just write something, even if it is instructions on how to start your car. If you get enough nonsense going and fill up the page a bit, the task doesn't seem as overwhelming. Then you just move on to your actual subject. Edit later. No one cares if the first draft starts out discussing the eating habits of gerbils and ends with the latest chapter in The Great American Novel. You'll be the only person that ever sees it.

I find writing in this or similar forums helps, but I do so by finding a post to which I want to reply, cutting and pasting it into a word processor, then replying to it in the word processor. I may or may not actually post that reply or even keep it, but the page is no longer blank, and I find it easier to move forward with something else.

[bain_sidhe]

15. Similar issue, my solution

Whenever I try to write with an idea of submitting it, I choke. Like you, obsessively re-writing, re-editing, second-guessing myself, and so on. Consequently, I've never sold any fiction.

The only kind of writing I like is an "exercise" I came up with many years ago. I call them "momentos" - I guess people call it "flash fiction" now, except for my exercise wasn't really to tell a complete story (at least, not necessarily, although sometimes they work out that way). My goal was to describe a 'moment" in time, usually "hooked" to an object. The "moment" is why/what makes that object important to somebody. It started with a thing I called "mucking out the moat" in which I imagnined a castle, inhabited for hundreds of years. Then I imagined all the things that got tossed into the moat through those hundreds of years. Then imagined the moment something was tossed in, and, in less than 1,000 words, tried tell the story of why it was tossed in, with enough detail and background to show why it was significant.

Then I added a new starting concept - grandma’s trunk. Imagine finding a trunk in your grandmother’s attic; imagine all the little things stored inside. Why did she save this? Why did she save that? Tell the story of the moment that made that object significant enough to her to save.

From there I broadened into “science fiction” - after all, it’s my favorite form of reading, why shouldn’t I try writing some of it? So the “starting concept” is the debris floating around a space station that has been destroyed. Each thing floating out there potentially has a “story” to tell, a moment in which it became significant, if only we could know it. The second one I wrote of those also marks the beginning of new thing - I hooked up with a guy that has a photo blog, and the “momento” itself was inspired by an image on it.

Now I'm doing "momentos" inspired by an image on that photo blog each day, and putting them online in my blog. What I like about this is that the "start" or "inspiration" comes from somebody else. I found that when I was making up the item/starting place, I tended to come up with things that I already HAD an idea for. Using CSCS's blog, I have to stretch, come up with NEW ideas to fit the image.

My new plan: write one "momento" a day. It doesn't matter if it's not perfect, because I'll never submit it anywhere. It doesn't matter if it's not a "complete" story, because it's only ever meant to show a "moment" in time. Do that until I'm confident enough that I HAVE good ideas, and the writing skills to make them shine.

It's kept me writing for several days, and my brain is racing three and four images ahead at any given time.

If you want to check out this "momentos" version of flash fiction, you can find it here: http://webfaerie.com

Or just come up with your own starting concept. It doesn't have to be a "moment" or an "object," just so long as you're writing something that YOU feel doesn't matter (in terms of publishing/marketing it, I mean).

Good luck!

[Pharlo]

21. For myself, I find a variation of this to be helpful...

I start with a piece of unlined paper, turn it horizontal, and write a word in the center. From there, I make a tree diagram - I generally set a minimum of four branches. I now have a basic idea and a minimum of four generally varying perspectives of that core object/idea. I also have plenty of blank space left to expand of these four ideas. And, I find as I begin writing, I soon run out of space and have moved onto the next page in full steam. I find an unlined page turned horizontally to be liberating. Turned sideways, it's reminiscent of art classes, not writing classes. The enmeshed structure of lined paper is eliminated. Similarly, the flashing cursor on a computer is as creatively off-putting as lined paper. It becomes a creative roadblock and a taskmaster.

Unlined paper turned horizontally is my method of mental liberation when unable to fix a course for a writing exercise.

[jane_pippin]

17. Maybe some exercises would help. Here are two I really like

because they have structure, yet allow you to do whatever you want. And they're only exercises so you don't have to worry about being perfect but you might get some good ideas out of them:

1. Write the alphabet. In this one you write something--story, poem, whatever you want--but the first sentence has to start with the letter "A" the second with "B" all the way through to "Z". It seems awkward, and sometimes it is, but it makes you think and you can always go back later and rewrite it non-alphabetically if you like some of it. Write it about anything. Look out of you window and describe what you see within the rules of the exercise.

2. Fun with numbers: Similar to the first but this time your first sentence must be one word, the second two, the third three, etc. and here's the fun part--it's all dialog. You can go as high as you want but once you get to the "middle" (let's say 20 words) you work your way back down sentence by sentence so you end with a one word sentence. (It doesn't have to be dialog, but I think it's fun to do it that way.)

[Thirtieschild]

18. Did you read my mind?

You described my experience with/attitude to writing better than I could have said it. I don't think I've ever written a sentence that I didn't have to rewrite. My record was eight hours to come up with 40 usable words. They were nice words, but eight hours? It's ridiculous. I started a coming-of-age novel in early 1993 and in the last 12 1/2 years have produced something like 40,000 words. I put it off and put it off, sometimes will go a couple of years without writing a word. But the need to do it never goes away. My mother begs me to finish the book while she's still alive and she just turned 97. I have eight chapters to go, which means she'll live well into her 100s.

My main hope is that the talent will still be there in my next life, but maybe that time buttressed by confidence.

[leftofthedial]

19. for a writer, fear of a blank page

is far preferable to fear of a page filled with words.

[Taxloss]

20. Salman Rushdie's advice is good.

If you're blocked on a story, the problem isn't what you're about to write, it's what you have already written.

Plough ahead, then return and revise. Samuel Beckett agonised for days over single words.

[Stevepol]

22. William Stafford said he never had a problem with writer's block

The reason? "If your standards were as low as mine are, you would never have writer's block either."

His attitude to whatever he writes is "Welcome." He can always cut it out later in favor of something else he "welcomes." In other words he doesn't have any standards.

[Taxloss]

23. Dupe

Idiot, I said that ages ago.

[petgoat]

24. Simplest Solution: Start on an unblank page.

Since I have a tendency to get sidetracked when I'm working on a book,
(especially when I'm near to finishing) I do not allow myself to work
on other projects when I'm in a book.

The exception is, if I have an idea for a project, I will write it down
enough so that I know what it's about. So I might write three pages and
a few notes on a story, or ten pages and a lot of notes about a novel,
or an outline for a nonfiction work.

So I have enough of a backlog of unfinished work that I can work on
something I've already started until the fear of the blank page passes.

[DavidDvorkin]

25. Different strokes for different folks

The problem with any advice for writers, concerning any particular writing problem, is that people will tell you to do what works them, but it may not work for you.

Now, here's what I do, and you should do this, too, because it's sure fire and is bound to work for you. :)

Write notes about what you plan to write. Organize them into sequential (plot) order. Expand the notes. Break the notes into logical chunks. By this time, you'll have a page that's far from blank, and you can start nibbling away at the chunks.

[leftofthedial]

26. doodle

write random words or phrases that pop into your head. Not writing trying to make sense; just compiling a list of words.

bug
word
possibility
laundry
random
voodoo
wine glass
egg
kleenex

[WCGreen]

27. When I can't continue on a project, I pull out one of

my old workshop books and pick an exercise and just go....

I keep a journal of gibberish and that is where I find my safe haven. I go there when the page is blank.

I always try to write about 3-4k words per week. So I keep track of what I am writing. Believe it or not, I have found several short stories within my gibberish journal...

[PATRICK]

29. The first million words theory

seems all too often true. Bradbury is just one of many to note that all that precedes the first REAL story is garbage.

Otherwise, write when somewhat fresh and spew using whatever skills or neurons that are flashing that day. Keep short and real and not too removed from the concrete and the oral. The ultimate frustration is really not comprehending that writing and speaking are two different forms of communicating. Usually we write terribly compared to our speech- though poor speech can be a warning of basic problems that make the situation even worse.

When tired edit and revisit and polish. If the spark comes back with vigor go for it, otherwise stay purely technical. Periods and pagination- not coloring or word choice. If in your state of mind you can pick up a favorite writer and find it dull and pointless it means the bulb is switched off- no fault of yours or Shakespeare. Get some rest.

Some good ideas come from the opposite situation, such as driving a car with no time to write down your words. Car stops, notepad quickly out, words lost. I tried fighting that with a recorder and have a really hilarious episode where some calmly serious verse through clenched teeth competes with squealing belts as if the car is screeching in some wild race.

A single phrase or sound or idea or picture is enough because if it comes to mind it is likely because the mind finds it interesting enough to build on. An abstract important idea however can be actually too nebulous or complex as a starting point and can intimidate one into total brain freeze.

(Note that I don't care how badly this quick response is written.)

[Bluerthanblue]

28. silly suggestion-

But- hey- we all have a point. Somewhere.

How about writing about the fear of a blank page- ?? Step outside you, and into someone who is afraid of the blank page that lies in front of them. Why? Because of what it might say? Because of what must be said? Because of what should be there cannot be contained by lines on a page?

What is the worst that could happen? You could write a few words, and then delete them all- How beautiful life might be if we could just press delete, or backspace, and return to the place we started from, without any baggage.

Don't be afraid to fail- or not measure up to some 'ideal'- Fear only has value, when it makes us think- or knows it's limits.

There is no WRONG way to WRITE-

Jump in- and swim- freestyle, or tread water, but don't let fear steal your voice.

blu

[Katherine Brengle]

30. I often have the same problem--major block this week for some reason.

[BlueIris]

31. "Unstuck," by Jane Ann Staw, Ph.D.

Will solve potentially ALL of your fears related to writing. I just found it and it has totally changed my life. I'm writing again after three years. 'S great.