Don’t Let the Blank Page Win by Emily

Don’t Let the Blank Page Win

Written by Emily, 2nd year MA


Hello all! I’m Emily, a second-year masters student in Philosophy here at Miami. I’m also a graduate writing consultant at the Howe Writing Center, where in addition to consulting I help run the hybrid-format synchronous Grad Writing Hours! One of the things I’ve heard people talk about as they participate in these periods of time where everyone is working on writing towards a specific goal is how good it feels to put words on the page. Whether you’re starting a new chapter of a thesis, a textual analysis for a class, or another section of that one idea for an article, it can feel difficult to overcome the anxiety and inertia to get the writing going. 


The idea for today’s blog post actually came from years of hearing advice my mom, a high school art teacher at the time, would give herself and her students when making visual art – you have to do something to move past the blank page fear. When we are looking at a blank sketchbook page or a blinking cursor on a white screen, it can feel like we shouldn’t make a mistake with our first marks. It can feel like we should have something polished to match the polished surface we’re working with. How do we address this blank page fear? 


For my mom and her students, the answer might be to lay down a color wash, creating the first layer of a background. Look! The page is no longer blank! The spell is broken and further mark-making can commence without the same fear of marring a “perfect” surface. 


So that’s how a visual artist might approach their blank page, but how do we translate that to the writing process? Kendra wrote last week about how the only thing a first draft has to do is exist, and this is a fantastic mindset to have going into the drafting stage! The first draft helps get the ideas floating around you into a more fixed state – once they’re on the page, those ideas can be tweaked and reworked as needed. Free-writing could be one strategy to catch some of those thoughts without worrying about getting everything perfect. The stream-of-consciousness writing exercise is often used in the pre-writing stage, but it doesn’t have to stay there; it can be equally useful while working on a draft. 


Using templates in your preferred drafting platform can also make sure there are some words on the page before you tackle a new assignment. Having the headings, date, course information if applicable, and other basic information already on the page means the page isn’t completely blank. Instead of the blank sketchbook, you have the start of a background layer ready to go! 


One of my personal favorite methods is translating my outline onto the page. Now, I’m an outline-lover at heart, it’s often the first stop in my writing journey. But I don’t think you need to have an outline fully prepared to make use of this method to interrupt the blank page fear. When I say translating my outline onto the page, it might be the very basics. I put my ideas in brackets, a sign and reminder to myself that the words I use may or may not stay as they are for now. A textual analysis for an Aristotle seminar might start out looking something like this:


[Books Alpha/Beta Question: tensions of unity and plurality]

[Book Gamma and relationship by analogy (chapter 2)]

[How relationship by analogy helps understand unity of being]


Now when I open the textual analysis document, I don’t have a blank page staring back at me. Instead, I have an idea of the specific goals I want to accomplish with the first few paragraphs, and maybe some notes about where I might need to refer back to the text. I might switch around the parts, or scrap paragraph ideas entirely – that’s a part of the writing process. But for getting started I have some words on the page. 


This half-outline method in the draft of your document can also help navigate another method of getting past the initial blank page fear: mood writing. By mood writing, I mean writing a section or part of the project that you’re really excited about or have ideas for first, even if that section doesn’t or won’t appear at the start of your actual finished text. We could also call it non-linear drafting. In the example above, I might want to get my thoughts down about relationships by analogy quickly so my ideas from class don’t fade away. Even though that appears in the middle, I have an idea of what’s coming before and after the section because of the on-the-page outline. Once you’re writing about something that sparks interest, you’ve started some momentum that can carry you forward in other parts of the project. 


Oh look, no more blank pages! Go forth and banish the blank page fear!


Comment below about your experiences with blank page fear!


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