There are a thousand reasons not to write a book. The time commitment alone is enough to send the average person running for the hills. Then there is the patience needed to complete multiple drafts, not to mention the audacity it takes to put an idea into action. Mostly I think the thing that keeps people from writing their novel is the scariest thing I can think of as a writer: the blank page.
Almost all of my days as of late begin with some well-practiced procrastination. I’ll make a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal (or if I am feeling particularly dramatic, eggs and toast) and then I sit at my computer fiddling with the search tabs in my browser and ignoring the nagging folder at the bottom of my screen that reminds me I have work to do. It isn’t my story’s fault for being so complicated or Google’s for being so seductive. I am sure the NSA agent assigned to my browsing history can attest that that too is of the more banal variety. The fault lies in the slate of glaring white, taking up more than its fair share of my computer screen and my thoughts. You see, to a writer the blank page is a travesty, an untapped well of unlimited potential. It could build an empire or topple one. A blank page is power without direction, striking its course on a million different paths, coming to every conclusion and none.
I think Spiderman’s Uncle Ben may have said it best, “With great power comes great responsibility”. While it might sound like the most epic of modern clichés, it is the sentiment shared by every writer staring at their own empty documents right now wishing that their idea was better, or clearer, or (gasp) more commercial. For some reason we have an inflated sense of importance when we look at that document, all fresh and unblemished by our first drafts. In that moment we all imagine ourselves the next Hemmingway, this decades Stephen King, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus. I imagine some kid finding a battered well-loved copy of my magnum opus in the corner of some second-hand book store, the wind picking up around them, and the theme music turning dark and mysterious so as to alert the audience that something life changing is about to take place. Okay, maybe the wind and the music wouldn’t happen but the rest of it isn’t too unrealistic. I have digressed, perhaps too far.
It’s not just those millions of paths the page could take us, it’s the person who could someday find those pages as we have filled them. The fear comes from imagining that reader looking at our work and finding it wanting, or in a somehow worse fate finding it wonderful. Then we have to find a way to live up to this imaginary audience’s expectations and pretty soon you find yourself huddled in your closet sucking your thumb wondering how you could be so bad at something without having written a single word. Whether you write high fantasy or pulpy thriller mayhem there is no greater terror than staring deeply into the hypnotic void of your imagination asking yourself, “So what do you want to write about?”. Then writing down your answer and thinking “Well nobody’s going to read that crap.” It’s a loop that goes on and on. Pulling yourself out of that kind of circular reasoning is a struggle, more than a struggle. As a writer we are no stranger to playing both hero and villain and so falling into a pattern of sabotaging our own success. Whether you consider success the top of a bestseller list or that battered life altering copy in a resale shop, you’ll never get there without overcoming the first hurdle: the blank page.