A Relatively Ordinary Life

I’ve been told that the hardest thing to do is to just put that first word on the blank page.

Should blank pages scare me or anyone who considers him or herself a writer?

Being scared of a blank sheet of paper is pointless. The paper will not and cannot hurt you. It’s actually the games that our minds play about the blank sheet of paper that hinder us from typing or scribbling that first word.

What if what the words that appear on the blank sheet of paper make no sense? What if no one reads the words painstakingly chosen to decorate that blank sheet of paper?

I’ve done the hardest part now. I have words on this blank sheet of paper. It does look better with all of these letters and words and punctuation marks. But those nagging thoughts still run rampant in my head.

How to overcome the negative thoughts about the letters and words and punctuation on this little blank page?

It must have been much harder to work on a typewriter. If the nasty mind reviewer got to be too much, the person-trying-to-be-a-writer would rip the once blank sheet of paper out of the typewriter. (I’ve always imagined that movement being quite dramatic and powerful.) And then that struggling writer who had conquered getting the first word down on the paper would have to start again.

Today, it’s much easier. We, today’s would-be writers have the DELETE key or we can choose not to save our blank sheets of paper with letters, words and punctuation on it.

How do you handle the scary, blank page?