Anyone who has seen The Shining can get a fairly clear idea of the horror which a blank page seems to strike into the heart of almost every writer. That is why writers will tell you that when it comes time to start writing everything else seems suddenly incredibly important. Checking emails, watering plants, tidying socks. Those things which you are normally trying to escape are transformed into opportunities to hide from the blank page that is waiting for you.
Why does the blank page scare us so much? If we think about it rationally then the blank page is actually something wonderful. Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde. Each of them transformed the blank page into something beautiful. And when each of us sits down to write the same possibility is there. The chance to create, give life to something that has never existed before. Whole worlds are waiting to be described, countless people waiting to be given a voice.
Perhaps what scares us about the blank page is the possibilities? How many people prefer to sit inside watching TV all day rather than go out and make real the millions of possibilities waiting for them. There is something scary about the limitless, the infinite, and something comforting about the limited. That is why so many people give up on their lives so easily, passing up the chance to be something wonderful. For the writer there is the same temptation. To hide from the blank page or else to cover it up with something they are comfortable with, something they have written many times before. But perhaps there a different way to approach the blank page?
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