I’ve been staring at a blank laptop screen a lot, lately. Guess what? The screen stares back. No smiley or winky emoji. No friendly banter. Just a big, white, vertical rectangle beneath a ribbon of word-processing tools.
The blank screen is a tabula rasa, of course. That’s both a good thing and a less-good thing. It’s good because it suggests that I’m free to inscribe anything about anything; to fill the whiteness with text plucked from the universe. Freedom! Wheeee!
It’s less good because blankness is as an empty void demanding to be stuffed, a canvas of silent and invisible accusations. It’s a torture device for anyone who trades in wordcraft.
Creativity imposes expectations to produce because otherwise, stories and ideas never make their way onto the screen, or the page, instead remaining cooped up within the artist’s inchoate brain.
That screen gives me the side-eye…its metaphorical feet tapping expectantly…
I’m mildly obsessed with the connection between productivity and art. And how the tools of an artist’s trade can either be enabling or symbols of defiance.
Think of a shoemaker of old, a roughly cut pile of leather soles stacked alongside his workbench. Every sole must be trimmed, fit for purpose, and glued or nailed to its matching upper. An unfinished sole speaks to a shoe not made, a customer not customized, a sale not yet completed.
Or a chef confronting a dozen raw ingredients, each sequestered in its little box or bag until the chef brings them together to make something greater than the sum of the parts. Otherwise, basil is just basil.
Or a composer staring at lonely staffs, a steady sea of horizontal lines awaiting to be transformed into measures populated by notes that will be sounded and sung, blasting new music out into the open air.
Like the cobbler’s leather, the chef’s raw ingredients, and the composer’s staff ledger, a blank screen is all about unfinished business, about making something from nothing—Sondheim’s proverbial hat.
This is daunting. Defeating. And, yes, exhilarating.
How can we make this work? How can we make the magic?
Anyone who pretends to have definitive answers to these questions is, well, pretending. All we can do is try out different behaviors in different combinations at different times.
Neuroscience may partially explain how we create, but nobody can tell us how to manipulate all those synapses on command or to best advantage.
So creation is one part chance, one part determination, one part neuroscience, and one part who-the-f*ck-knows?
With these humble caveats in place, I’ll share a handful of options for gaming the system just a bit to help you get the best of that blank page.
1. Alter your reality
I sit in the same place day after day. It’s dawning on me that consistency may be working against me by dulling my senses. Working in a coffee shop, a library, a cottage in Greece overlooking the water…any change in venue, where the sights, smells, and sounds are somewhat unfamiliar or less predictable than usual will alter brain receptors, creating new pathways to link up emotion, memory, and intellect.
2. Invite incomprehensibility
I once had to write a short play overnight so that it could be performed the next day. To jolt my creative juices, I opened at random a fat tome on our bookshelf by the Russian-British philosopher Isaiah Berlin. I stumbled on a passage that inspired a whole new train of thought (can’t remember it now!) and I was off to the races, drafting a quite original play about an existential lost-and-found.
You can do this with film, too. Watch an old, expressionist silent film, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This will send your imagination into overdrive.
The trick is not to read or watch anything familiar that you can readily imitate. Choose something that feels strange in the most literal sense.
3. Make friend with your unconscious
We’re often so desperate to make sense on the page that we deny ourselves the opportunity to make nonsense. If you have no clue what to put on that blank screen, then start typing by tapping into your stream-of-conscious. Words, sentences, fragments, song lyrics, memories, poetry, whatever bits of language rise to the surface, let them flow onto the page. After 10 minutes of this, I’m willing to bet you’ll produce something that sparks an exciting idea—something you didn’t know you were thinking about.
Bonus points: Print out this material, then highlight or circle the words or phrases that spontaneously grab you, interest you most. What do they add up to? What’s the message?
4. Quell the inner critic
I know, I know. It’s hard to stop judging yourself. You can’t—not entirely. But you have the capacity to override that messaging simply by continuing. Keep writing (this is where stream-of-consciousness is your friend). Do it despite your inner critic; that is only one voice of many. And remember: NOBODY IS READING WHAT YOU’RE WRITING. There’s no judging in the vacuum of space. Your inner judge doesn’t count—not at this stage. It can jabber on, but you have permission to ignore everything it says.
5. Strike ‘productivity’ from your vocabulary
I’ve said this before and it bears repeating. Creators are not bound by time, by measurements, by quantifiable outputs. (I’m excluding writers under contract on a hard deadline.) Whether you stare at the blank screen for a minute, an hour, a day, whatever you create is a job well done. “Only” a sentence, a short paragraph, a skeletal outline? There is no “only.” There is creating or not creating. Period. And if you created anything, that’s great and soon you’ll create more.
Don’t stare at the screen expecting to be “productive.” Revel in the opposite. Be unproductive. Sit there and think. Imagine. Scribble. Draw. Write free verse.
Nothing kills a writer’s productivity faster than obsessing over productivity.
Well, it looks like I’ve cracked the blank-screen problem. My work here is done.
Nah. Just kidding.
I’ll face it again tomorrow. And so will you. And all we can do—should do—is make words, one at a time, and watch our stockpile grow…slowly, painfully, but also joyfully.
Reserve a copy now: Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration.
“Keep it handy, dip in as you need, and scribble in your own doubt-dispelling passages among the sure insights and notable quotations.”
—Allison K Williams, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book
"There is creating or not creating. Period." I just wrote that on a post-it and stuck it on the corner of my monitor.
Right on Amy! Tools: my synth kybd sits right next to my bed, ready to spring into action. I may not have dream ideas like i used to, that I ned to get down under the fingers to record and work on later, but the kybd is there to remind me (without chastizing) that the possibility is there.