Yeah. That’s a lie.
If you needed to hear that it’s okay for you to not kill yourself trying to put words on pages every day of your natural life, consider this that moment. Everyone’s different. Your needs are different from Margaret Atwood’s are different from mine. Do what works for you.
That said, any writer worth their weight in salt knows that you do have to write at least semi-regularly, the same way you’d have to practice any skill at least semi-regularly to get better at it. But sure as God’s got sandals, there will always be obstacles that keep writers from doing the writing thing. Today we’re going to talk about one particularly nefarious issue: Blank Page Syndrome.
Even if you’ve never heard the term before, you probably know what it means and how it feels. There’s really nothing comparable to the fear and dread that can bubble up inside you every time you open a blank page or document and find yourself utterly devoid of words to put upon it.
Writers of all backgrounds and levels of experience hit this roadblock at least once in their lives. Hell, I even felt it a little bit writing this post. But it can be conquered. You can make that blank page your bitch. All you need is a set of tools to help you when Blank Page Syndrome strikes.
Give Yourself a Laughably Easy Bare Minimum
I know I just spent a couple paragraphs telling you not to sweat it if you don’t write every day but I really can’t understate the virtues of… well, writing every day. It’s just a matter of math; the more time and effort you put into a skill, the better you’re going to get. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. That’s just how it is.
But I also understand that putting words on a page every day can be daunting at best and face-tearingly horrendous at worst. Believe me when I say I empathize. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even be writing this. I’d be taking a nap I neither need nor deserve.
So, instead of self-flagellating every time you fail to meet your goal, why not reevaluate your goal? Why not move the goal post a little closer until you’re consistently meeting those marks?
If you can’t write 1,000 words a day, why not write 500 words a day? Or, if you’re like me and have energy levels as consistent as Bitcoin prices, why not aim for a certain number of words per week?
Still too much? What about one paragraph a day? What about one sentence a day? Keep going lower and lower until you find a bar you can hit. Then, start there.
Even if a sentence a day doesn’t feel like much, those sentences will add up. Anyone who’s participated in National Novel Writing Month knows that it only takes 1,667 words a day to add up to a 50,000-word novel in one month. Small steps matter.
Don’t Get it Right, Get it Written
I have a Bachelor of Arts in Professional and Technical Writing. While I was in school acquiring this very useful degree that was totally worth the $53,000 of student loan debt I racked up in the process, much to my amazement, I learned a lot about writing. Sometimes, people with more knowledge and experience than you can actually offer useful insights on how to make you better. Who knew?
One of the things I heard over and over again was not to edit as you’re writing. Editing as you go was believed to be one of the cardinal sins of professional writing. Thou Shalt Not Edit While Drafting, my professors would wail every time they caught any of us meager ingrates so much as reaching for the Backspace key.
My blog is still fairly young, so allow me to tell you something important about me: I do not like being told what to do. I am stubborn and spiteful and I’ll probably die the stubborn and spiteful old curmudgeon I’ve been since conception. I like to be the rebel. I walk the unbeaten path. I see things a little differently.
Another thing you need to know about me is that I am a chronic edit-as-I-writer. I can’t help myself. I just really prefer editing to writing and even typing 90-100 words per minute I can't keep up with the shitty carnival sideshow of random thoughts constantly playing out inside my head.
I used to dismiss the constant warnings from my writing professors that I was just wasting time. "Editing is for later!" They'd tell me. "Don't get it right, get it written!"
Bah, I said. What's the point? Maybe it would matter if I had a separate person as an editor, but I have to do both jobs myself. Why not do them simultaneously?
To a certain degree, I still believe this. I don't think there's anything wrong with indulging the occasional editing tangent when you're writing if the spirit moves you a certain way. HOWEVER, time and experience have also shown me that a limit is necessary. The need to create perfect content on the first try can paralyze a writer, as it has paralyzed me time and time again, but your first try is not supposed to be perfect. Your first draft is your sketch. You might clean up a few lines here and there but ultimately you’re not going to be able to refine it to perfection until you have a basic layout to work with first. So quit putting that kind of pressure on yourself. It’s dumb and it doesn’t serve you.
By the end of my (first) senior year, that adage I'd once rolled my eyes at became a mantra I still chant to this day: Don't get it right. Get it written. If you find yourself worried that you’re not going to get it perfect on the first try, then congratulations. You are just like every other writer that exists.
Start at the Beginning… or Anywhere Else
I’ve recently taken up fanfiction writing as a hobby. It’s a nice way to flex my fiction muscles without having to come up with like, actual original characters and ideas. It’s also a good way to get me writing more often than I normally would. It’s also also a good way to get noticed by people on the internet, which is going to be convenient and splendid when I finally work up the muster to write my own stuff.
Here’s a screenshot from a fic I’ve been working on, on and off (mostly off these days), for about a month now:
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| For the record, YES, it IS Ace Attorney fanfiction. |
As I’m sure you can tell, I did not write a beginning. Why? Because I couldn’t think of one.
Writing doesn’t have to start at the beginning of the story. If you find yourself stuck on a beginning, jump to a part where you’re not stuck. Writing an academic paper and can’t think of an introduction? Don’t write the introduction; start with the body. It might sound crazy, but think about it like this: How can you introduce a paper that doesn’t even exist yet?
There is no shame in jumping around to different parts of your project. Most movies aren’t shot chronologically; shooting schedules are often based on what locations, people, and props are available at the time, or by order of priority. Why shouldn’t writing be the same way?
This includes skipping the little things, too. Look back at my example photo; you’ll see there’s another double-bracketed placeholder reminding me to double-check the crimes Manfred von Karma committed because I couldn’t remember them all at the time I was writing. That’s allowed. You’re allowed to skip things you don’t know or can’t remember and come back to them later.
Of course, it’s easy to forget that you skipped a part of your project, so be sure to leave yourself an obvious placeholder to go back to when you’re ready. You can leave any kind of placeholder you like, but if you don’t want to think that hard, use the letters [TK], with or without brackets. Why? These two letters rarely show up next to each other in English words. It makes finding them with Ctrl+F waaaay easier down the road.
Just Fucking Write
Stephen King said it best: Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work. Sometimes there is no life hack or sick trick to help you jump that hurdle between a blank page and a page with words on it.
So, the next time you find yourself suffering Blank Page Syndrome, just start writing. Write anything. It doesn’t even have to be relevant to the project you’re working on. Hell, write about how obnoxious this advice is or how much you hate this stupid project you have to do. Write your favorite fudge recipe from memory. I don’t care. You shouldn’t either. It’s not about the quality of the content right now. It’s about proving you have the power to string together words into some kind of intelligible order.
Blank Page Syndrome and all other forms of writer’s block are 90% a mind game. It’s not like your brain suddenly unplugged itself. You have the power to write inside you, no matter how mentally constipated you feel. So do it. Do it terribly if you have to. In fact, I encourage it. Write some absolute garbage, have a good laugh about it, and then get back on the horse.
When the founder of PaperDemon.com, BogusRed, was in art school, she had a professor who said something to the effect that every artist has about 10,000 really shitty drawings inside of them. Like, no matter what you do with them, those 10,000 drawings are just going to be the worst things you’ve ever created. But once those 10,000 are out of your system, you’re golden.
The idea is this: Sometimes, you’re just going to produce shit. Everyone does. Including and especially myself. This blog ain’t exactly Shakespeare. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t let it matter. If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs.
If you’re really, truly stumped and struggling, then take a break. Get up. Walk away. Get a drink. Give yourself at least five minutes. Then come back and try again.
Don’t let your brain play games with you. Make that blank page your bitch. It’s just a sheet of paper or some glowing lights on a screen. It can’t hurt you.
And, if all else fails, just remember that the Fifty Shades of Grey books were formed from Twilight fanfiction, not professionally edited, and still became a bestseller with a movie deal. Shitty writing gets published every day and great writing gets ignored every day. The whole publishing industry is subjective and meaningless. So just write, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t have to be good. You wrote it and no one else did. That’s good enough.
See you next week. Be good. Make art.
Have a suggestion or request for next week’s topic? Hit me up on Twitter or leave a comment below!
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