Staring at a blank page is like having a brain freeze. Your brain doesn’t know what to say, what to write, or what to think. It’s stuck. It can be frustrating, even discouraging.
It’s like you’re waiting for your mind to tell your fingers what to type. But once you get started, it feels liberating. Writing can be like a conversation you’re having with yourself, or it can be an out of body experience–a phenomenon where an idea takes ahold of you and you’re writing without knowing in advance what the words will be or what the end goal is.
You can write a lot if you don’t stop to think about what you’re writing. I find that once I stop to correct something or to find the right words, the flow dwindles down, and it’s hard to pick up the pace. It’s kind of like jogging and then stopping to check a message on your phone. It hinders the pace, the mental conversation stops, and you have to pick up where you left off.
For me, writing is about momentum, about getting the thoughts down before the hold of the idea let’s go. I don’t stop to fact check or refine the piece for clarity or remove errors during the first draft. Just like with jogging, you build up stamina by writing more and more each time. Whenever you’re interrupted, it’s hard to build that stamina up because there was a pause in the workout.
Whenever I stare at a blank page, I think of what I want to say, what’s on my mind. If I struggle to write anything, I make a list of ideas of things I’d like to write about. After I decide which one to focus on, I start with my initial thoughts on it. Then I add a sentence to it, and then another . . .
Fallton Havenstonne 