I’ve stared at a lot of blank pages, as have you I’m sure of it. It’s unnerving to sit there and stare at all the blankness of it. And when you sit there for more than an hour, a day, a month the blank page seems to grow and encompass the entire space seemingly pushing all thoughts out of the way for its own existence. It can be intimidating to sit there and not have the slightest idea of what to put on it. And despite that feeling, you can find solace in knowing that we all begin there. It is our starting point.
For many, this page becomes overwhelming and it appears to be the root cause of writer’s block. For others, myself included, the blank page is an invitation, it is an opportunity, it is the all and the nothing chaotically playing together. The blank page is potential. It is the Prima Materia.
What’s interesting about sitting there, staring at the blank page is that it is truly the moment in which '“that which is above (you) is from that which is below, and that which is below (the page) is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.” What comes to surface on the page is what you bring to it, from your unconscious. It is really the moment you come face to face with your own unknown and through your imagination you collect bits and pieces of your memories, symbols of yourself and transform them into a creation on the paper.
American author novelist Jonathan Franzen said, “The blank page of the mind has to be filled before you can face the actual blank page.” Joyce Carol Oates says she mediates before approaching the blank page and comes to it already with a thought. Others approach the blank page as they are in the moment, because the clock said it was writing time. I’ve approached the blank page both ways, with an idea or thought in mind, where I’ve either been visited by the Muse or have worked through my own inner stories and symbols to create something I can share with others. Other times, I’ve sat there with thoughts as blank as the page I’m staring at. And the results have varied.
In many, many instances I’ve written right out of the gate when I come with a premeditated idea for what I will write about and other times I draw a blank immediately upon sitting. Another night, I will sit down to complete my writing time duties and a spark of ideas will hit me, while other nights, again I’m just blank. In all of those instances though, the excitement of the blank page is there. You know those scenes in movies when the character opens a book and it lights up and shines on their surprised face as they read it because the book is magical? That’s what sitting there is like for me. It is shining a bright, sometimes blindingly, light on my face beckoning me to add some of myself to it so that it can become something, anything. The call is not to create a masterpiece, but to simply create.
There are reasons why that “writer’s block” comes up, but the blank page, the potential, is not where it comes from. Being given the opportunity to write or create anything you can imagine is not the cause of writer’s block or artist’s block.
When you dig deeper, you realize that it is your very own unconscious material that is overwhelming you and you freeze. You see, to create anything you have to reach within and somehow make sense of your own personal stories, lessons, triggers, symbols, caricatures, escape routes, dream land and view it as something that is apart from you in order to transform it into art. This detachment that we ask of ourselves when we create can feel as if you’re giving up a part of your own identity. It can feel a bit depressive and make you feel stagnant and incapable of creating because you’re correlating that feeling of detachment to losing a part of yourself and even if it is to make art, it is still scary as shit to do.
I have held on to stories, to my past, in drawers by my nightstand hoping for the courage to put them on to paper and share them. But there is a fear in exposing my self in that way. So in my writing I just graze by the truth, always a sentence or two away from revealing it. It wasn’t until my latest iteration of alchemy class these past few months that I understood that the fear of writing that is because of the fear of letting it go. Because who will I become once I can no longer cling to the things that have shaped me? What and who will I become when I’ve transformed them into their own story? And trust me, your ego is going to hold on tight to the identity it has propped up for you based on those triggers.
Nigredo-ing is layered work. In the initial layer, you’re literally digging through the muck, making your way out of the shadow. I’ve written poems upon poems on clawing my way out of the trauma. Honestly, that layer of Nigredo was really rewarding from a creative standpoint. My poems were seeping with inner angst, anger, passion, love, it was all very potent. But there was a moment when I walked out of the dark night of the soul and my writing slowed. I thought the Muse had left me, even though I wanted to continue writing.
What was actually happening was that I feared going back in. I was afraid of going back to those traumatic moments and being sucked into a depressive mode. And as provocative as the call to be that tortured poet girl stuck in a cycle of depression and great poetry books was, I knew deep down it wasn’t the right path. Alchemy teaches you to detach yourself and take on this wider lens. It allows you to see the bigger picture and even gives you the space to bring your imagination in and have it move things around in a way so that you can cup the memory in your hand and plop it down on paper reimagined. In the same way that you sit over that white paper, you are sitting over your own inner world. You are not in it.
The blank page waits for you to seize your moment. It waits for you to peel back that layer, dig in, and bring forward from the unconscious to the material that which has shaped you and changed you. It is a form of ego death. What truths you’ve told yourself because of those experiences and no longer yours to hold on to. They are now exposed and detached from the true you.
Then the next layer after that is leaving it on the paper, transformed into the art you were meant to create with it, and letting it go. It is removing the power that storyline had on you so that it can serve others as a guide, a beacon of hope, a piece of art that moves them to pull themselves from their muck and moves them to pull their own stories forward. Can you see it now? The potential of that blank page?
I hope you do and that you begin to approach the blank page with this feeling of excitement and gratitude over the opportunity that is presented before you. I know that we all come to the blank page when we start a new work. But I want to encourage you to try this exercise from poet Arthur Sze. In an interview with The Poetry Magazine Podcast, Arthur Sze and Forrest Gander talk about the importance of blank pages. Arthur Sze took three of his poems, laid them on the floor, and places blank pages around the poems and asked himself, “Is this complete? Is there something in this empty space I can’t see that wants to emerge?” What an invitation to yourself to dig within. I will definitely be adding this exercise to my writing.
Arthur Sze also talks about how some poets approach the blank page with a poem already in mind. He explains that writing poetry is an act of discovery. I think that extends to any form of art. You’re not only discovering new parts of yourself but also the world around you. Slowing down to really explore the depth in which a line can take you and giving yourself the grace needed to be a little uncomfortable with that process is really where that true poem and art piece will come from.
I’ve linked his interview here if you would like to listen to it and also explore his works, which come from approaching the blank page in this manner.
It is really encouraging that every artist, writer, poet, creator, we’ve all sat in front of the blank page. Somehow, our inner stories and symbols end up on it, as if by magic. Only the creator knows the layers and layers it had to dig through and work through to find them and the courage it took to place them there.
wow so inspiring!!