Last week, I sat down to finally start the new short story that had been percolating in my mind for months. Beyond the story’s premise, I hadn’t settled on much else. Who would tell the story, and in what form? I had a lot to work out before I could draft even the first sentence. I opened my writing notebook so I could jot down notes by hand, and I also opened a Word document on my laptop so I’d be ready to start typing when the moment came.
And just like that, I had not one but two blank pages before me.
Writers often discuss the blank page—how they fear it, or relish it, or avoid it, or sit in awe with it. Google “blank page intimidation” or “blank page fear” and you’ll get a taste of the complex relationship many writers have with the blank page. In general, I try to see the possibilities inherent in a blank page rather than feel intimidated by it. But in this case, as I sat staring at two blank pages, I responded in a different way: I worried that what I was doing was ridiculous.
Those empty pages reminded me that I was at the beginning of a long, imperfect process in which I would make up a new world and new people. I would be alone in this endeavor for a while before sharing my work with my critique partners, revising multiple times, and eventually submitting the story to publications, where it would likely earn its share of rejection. All in an attempt to write an oddball literary story that the larger world isn’t exactly begging to read.
As I sat there with my dual blank pages, I could only think what a strange, wild, and impractical journey I was embarking upon. And in that moment, I admit it—I could see why writers quit.
Many writers seem to stop writing in the years after an MFA program, once the deadlines and camaraderie disappear. But MFA or not, any writer might quit. It could happen after a writer spends enough time in “real world” environments or jobs. Or it happens when the prospect of competing in the mercurial publishing industry no longer seems tenable. Or when the potential payoff appears too abstract or unlikely. Or when the writer is simply too exhausted to continue writing while also earning an actual living, raising a family, or juggling other responsibilities. In any case, the work tapers off. Maybe these writers don’t outright quit––it’s usually not so definitive––but the writing dries up regardless.
With those empty pages before me, one a lined notebook and one a glowing sheet of electronic white, I understood the pull to simply stop facing the blank page. At this stage of the writing process, publication, or any other form of validation, simply does not exist. There’s the page and the words on it, or there’s nothing. Blankness.
And yet even as I glimpsed the rationale behind quitting, I also knew I wouldn’t do it. I determined a long time ago that regardless of whatever success might or might not come my way, I’ll never give up. You could say I’m just that stubborn, or ambitious, or impractical, or optimistic, or delusional. Whatever it is that drives me, I’ll keep going.
Like right now. As of this writing, those pages reserved for my new story are no longer blank. The notebook page is scrawled over with my messy handwriting—notes, ideas, questions, plot points. The Word document, meanwhile, transformed from a lone stretch of white to seven single-spaced pages of text. It has gone from nothing to my imperfect, incomplete, aspirational first draft showcasing the lives of imaginary people in an imaginary world.
Writing that first draft was a ridiculous thing to do, but I did it anyway. And I have every intention to repeat that process again and again—to not only to face the blank page, but to change it, to fill it, to make it something new.