So I’ve just started a new project. I wrote a short story, decided that the concept would work as a novel and so sketched out a basic plot and started a new document. I changed the font and font size from Times New Roman size 10 to Courier New size 11 and saved it under its working title. And then I was faced with the Blank White Page. Sometimes I write the title at the top but I’m not sure about the title for this one so all I have typed out is the number 1 and a full stop after it, for the chapter heading. And that’s it. Just one number and then vast amounts of Blank White Nothing.
The book that I’ve finished writing is 244 pages long. So I’m pretty much looking at 244 pages that need to be filled. With something. Words, preferably. I do not like the Blank White Page and I’m pretty sure that the Blank White Page does not like me. I think it’s mocking me.
Past experience tells me that I have three different ways of dealing with the Blank White Page. The first is to just not be afraid of Blank White Page. It has no power over me, I am the writer, I will fill its nothingness with words and it will be blank no longer. I get the feeling that Blank White Page is a bigger enemy of the planners than for those who prefer to wing it. The Limebird pantsers probably all embrace this first technique with open arms but I usually call it the My Deadline Is Coming Up So Fast That If I don’t Write Something, Anything, Soon, It’s Going To Sail Right By Me And I’ll Have Missed It Completely Technique. It was the technique that I frequently used at the end of a semester when all of my assignments were due in the same week. So I suppose, for me, this isn’t really not being afraid of the blankness, but actually being more afraid of something else so that I forget about the blankness.
The second technique is to open a new document and just type as much as I can of whatever happens to come into my head, even though I know as I’m writing it that it isn’t any good, just to have something down on the page. I’m going to call this technique the Running From The Light Switch To The Bed At A Dead Sprint To Avoid The Monsters Hiding Underneath The Bed Technique. Pretty much all of what I write when using this technique will end up being deleted or edited to be completely unrecognisable, but it does solve the immediate Blank White Page problem.
The third technique is the one that I’m current using. This technique involves ignoring Blank White Page completely and writing the first chapter out by hand in a notebook and then typing it up so that Blank White Page becomes the first chapter about ten minutes after I start typing. I’m going to call this technique the You’re A Coward Limebirdster You Have Not Really Defeated Blank White Page But You Do Appear To Have Actually Written Something So I Won’t Go On About It Too Much Technique.
The only drawback with the third technique is that my handwriting is so big that one page in my notebook becomes about a paragraph when typed. It’s also quite difficult to add a sentence into a paragraph, especially if you’re writing on a page with no margins which for some reason I am. But it does work, I have written something, I have started.
So what about you? What techniques do you use when faced with the Blank White Page or does Blank White Page not scare you? And are the pantsers as afraid of Blank White Page as the planners?
Limebird Writers 