First Drafts - The Horror of Facing the First Blank Page of Your Book

Tips For Dealing With Paralysis, Writer’s Block and Procrastination

For everyone who has ever found themselves stuck at their desk...

I don’t pretend to be William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens or that mad writer of book after book, Mark Twain, but I have somehow or another made a living writing and I can tell you there is nothing more terrifying than facing the first blank page of the novel or article or non-fiction book that is your heart’s desire.

The thing about THE PAGE is that it asks so much of you. It demands that you willingly write tens of thousands of words that people will find not just acceptable, but so engaging, funny, thrilling and surprising that they will pay real money for it. How is this possible?

The sheet itself is nothing but a blank page, yet it gapes malevolently; you sit before it knowing it is an abyss where bad ideas and characters, horrible similes and adverbs go. You know that whatever you write will be horrible and never sold, and editors will revile you for the inept, scrivener you are.

Yes, I have thought these things, but I have also filled that yawning page and lived to write about it. You can too. Because horrifying as it is, you can fill that page and all the other pages that follow until the book, novel, screenplay, article or documentary becomes a real thing that hundreds of thousands of people will read … of their own free will.

So if, like me, you have trembled before the mountain of junk you are sure you will build rather than words that will win the hearts and minds of your readers, know it can be done.

Some thoughts . ..

Tip One: Don’t Mumble

An editor of mine once said to me, when writing, know what you are trying to say. There have been plenty of times I’ve struggled to write a scene or a paragraph and I finally learned the reason I was running in circles to get it right was because I didn’t really know what the hell I was talking about. I thought I did, but the page kept proving me wrong. It happens because we think we know what is in our heads, but it’s ephemeral. Not concrete enough for words. So when you’re stuck, I would do one of two things: simply sit back and ask, “What ARE you trying to write?” Who is this character or what really is this idea? What’s the goal? Because if it’s not clear to you, it will never be clear to your readers. If I’m really jammed, usually on a bigger scene or idea, I sometimes put the offending words aside and let my subconscious clarify for me. You would be amazed at how well this works because when you have placed a problem into your subconscious, it will want to scratch that itch and find a solution. And problem solved! (Note for another time—the power of the subconscious, the writer’s greatest asset).

Tip Two: A Book Isn’t the Same Thing as an Idea

This approach applies to whole books and novels too. Any writer can get into plenty of trouble if he is certain he or she has a ripsnortin’ great open for his novel, but no idea what comes afterwards. You think you know what comes afterwards, you are that jazzed, but after the first flash of brilliance everything else fizzles because you have wandered into the desert without a map. In other words, the idea for a book, is not the same thing as the book itself. This may be one reason Ernest Hemingway wrote that he liked to stop writing when he was in the middle of a scene because the next day he would know exactly where to begin scribbling the next morning. Momentum is possible even when sitting immobile at a desk.

This doesn’t mean you have to a have a spreadsheet of your plot, or every scene and character absolutely planned, at least that has rarely worked for me. But you always want to have a working premise clearly in your head, essentially a simple story that you are confident can be brought alive. Though I hate the term, think of it as an elevator speech to yourself. Put it on a sticky. Tape it on your forehead.

For my award-winning non-fiction book Last Ape Standing, I knew from research I had produced for a PBS documentary I had previous written and directed entitled Fires of the Mind that many upright, intelligent apes had evolved over the previous seven million years — Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, Denisovans, the “hobbits” of Indonesia— but only one still remained. Us. How did that happen? Why did it happen? That was my original premise. Without it, I would have been lost, but once I had it, I was soon outlining all of the chapters.

For my techno-thriller Doppelgänger I wondered what would happen if a man downloaded his mind into a machine one day and then was murdered several days later? Could the machine solve the original’s murder? A great premise for a murder mystery, I thought, and then it grew into a dramatic story that explored what the next phase of evolution might look like. (Maybe we wouldn’t be the Last Ape Standing after all.)

My screenplay Sunset Grill asked this question: if human organs could be replaced with other people’s body parts, could traffickers in California begin kidnapping illegal aliens to sell their organs to a “legitimate” company that was providing the service? That was inspired by a Pulitzer Prize winning series I read in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette while home for the Christmas holidays one year.

You don’t know where a premise is going to come from. I don’t. But it’s usually something your brain is really excited about; something you love! White Out, the mystery novel I am currently working on, was inspired when I visited the Arctic Circle for another book I was writing, Immortality, Inc., and I just couldn’t get the town out of my head until a premise for the murder mystery came to mind. I already had a main character percolating, but the the arctic town of Utqiagvik delivered the mystery, and the dramatic ending, fully formed like a birthday gift. But always, as the first page lay white and blank before me, but I had a map. It may have been vague and tattered with large blank spots that read, “Here be dragons!”, but with the premise in hand, I knew the rest would fall into place. (At least I hope it will. You can read more about my ongoing efforts here: LINKS TO THE PREVIOUS ARTICLES ABOUT WHITE OUT.)

Tip Three: Write Junk

But, you say, what if I know the premise of my great novel, and I begin to write, but everything that comes out of my pen (or word processor) is junk? What if I don’t get the words in the right order and nothing but crap emerges. My personal solution? Embrace its ugliness! Attack it, in fact. (This assumes you have been reading madly all your life which is why you want to write in the first place.) Accept that the first words you put to paper will stink. But so what? It’s just you and the paper. Now you have clay with which you can build bricks that will become an ediface, a monument to your creativity. I used to tell my daughters when they played softball that if they didn’t swing when they were at bat, there was a 1000 percent chance they’d never get a hit. Same when before the blank page. Learning is all about mistakes and writing whatever comes out of your head (with said aforementioned premise in mind) are the mistakes out of which you will shape and reshape your story. Accepting that whatever you write will be bad is liberating and relieves you of the fear of failure. And for that reason you may even find that what first comes out of your head isn’t so terrible after all.

Tip Four: Ban the Demons

Related to this, and key as you set out on your literary journey: stuff the demons in a jar, and then put the jar in a closet. We all have little monsters that exist solely to remind us of all of the mistakes we are about to inflict with our pens: Sister Leona always over my shoulder to check the correct spelling of “accommodations,” or fears that your friends will read your first draft and say things like, “Oh, Chip, that scene with Buffy at sunset, it … (struggling for words) really moved me,” or the gremlin that says you will never write funnier stories than Hunter Thompson or pen anything as life-changing as the Great Gatsby. The list is endless, but these trolls must be shut up and you do that by saying (out loud and often if necessary), “F**k off! This is between me and my mind, and you are not invited … at least until the second draft.” This actually works. It called neurolinguistic programming. The voices in our heads are constantly sending messages just at the surface of our conscious mind. Taking control of the negative ones by first becoming aware of them and then giving them the boot changes the messages you send to yourself, and if those messages are positive rather than negative, good things will happen. You want a clear and liberated mind while writing, not chaos.

Tip Five: Scar Tissue Is Good

I have been around long enough to have developed a good deal of what friend of mine calls “scar tissue,” which is to say, I’ve made plenty of mistakes and have the wounds and broken noses to prove it. But with every blow, something is learned, which is why you have to get in the arena first. Don’t give up on your ideas. Turn them into premises. If a book or a non-fiction proposal fails, learn from it and write another, better one. When people say that want to write a book or novel, they inevitably ask how to do it. I say, politely, “Sit down and write every day. There’s no other way., and no easy way” Doing that means mistakes will be made. Scar tissue will follow, but so will new knew insights and knowledge that will make the next effort easier.

Hopefully these little hints can help get that memoir or non-fiction book, novel or screenplay you’re writing or contemplating into a completed first draft. Every time I’ve found myself stopped, not moving forward, I remind myself of these little tricks. Works every time.

But what about the second draft?. That’s a different kind of struggle, and exactly where I am at with White Out right now.

More on that coming soon.

This post is part of an exclusive ongoing series about writing in general and the development of my next novel, currently entitled White Out, in particular. From early inspirations and research travels to character development and plot twists, I’m sharing the journey as it unfolds, but only with subscribers. Read the entire White Out creative series here. To get future installments delivered exclusively to your inbox, by join my newsletter. There you also receive discounts on other books, inside information on other projects, even discounts on travel at www.vagabomnd-adventure.com.