Meditations on a Blank Page

You always start with a blank page. And then words begin to emerge from the void. "In the begining was the Word...", as the scripture goes.

How am I to fill this blank page today? Well, by simply emptying the contents of my mind.

Isn't it remarkable how we can never stop thinking and yet when it comes to writing, our fingers freeze. The blankness of the page stares back at us. Why can't we use the same psychology to turn the tables on our monkey minds?

Whenever we face writer's block, our minds are actually not blank. In actual fact, they are brimming with thoughts--negative ones. These are mostly fear, disappointment and distractions. Fear that what we produce is not good enough; disappointment at every sentence that we attempt to produce and then conveniently jumping to other tracks of thoughts that are less demanding or stressful.

If we just dump every thought we have, no matter how unworthy they are on the page, we'll never run out of things to write about. I fear writing another pointless sentence like this one. And this one. But why fear as no one will be reading this anyway? It's because I demand that of myself: I want to write something that carries meaning and insight. Every sentence I write is a mental bicep curl, to strengthen my capability to produce sentences that carry meaning. 

I have fears also that what I write is of such poor quality that my readers (if there's any at all) will not think well of me. That's another trap I want to avoid. To write to impress my imaginary readers--it is a good exercise by itself but if it bothers you that someone is unimpressed by what you do, then you have set yourself up for a lot of suffering.

But don't we all want an approving audience for whatever we do--be it a new mobile app you've hacked, a live show performance or a newly-launched business? As a matter of fact, in the case of a business, it is the raison d'etre of its existence. A product that no one approves of will not make the creator any money.

A business is a self-imposed ego structure--like a new-born baby. It has to have an ego to have a meaningful existence. An ego has a personality, a vision and a goal which it strives towards. It's a self-imposed purpose of existence which sets itself for a lot of painful obstacles. No successful enterprise comes without pain or sacrifice. A business that produce goods and services which no one approves of, is always a risk that it has to be prepared for. 

What do we do if we need an audience but we are attracting none? Then we need to do something about it--change our product features, style or content; revise our marketing strategy and get feedback from the users. We have to make adjustments. A failure to make adjustments dooms a business. The ability to be agile and nimble, to react quickly to change is essential for any business to be successful. 

Rejection can be painful but is just another data point. Use it to chart your next course of action. Iterate again. Life is a series of iterations. Every advance thwarted is another piece of experience that could help us refine our products. Sometimes our goals are not realistic; we could have completely misread the market. Adjustments are needed. Take stock, readjust and retry.

A sentence that materializes on an empty page like this is the result of many iterations. Some of them occur in the mind; some on-screen with the help of the trusty backspace key. A sentence lurches forward in fits and starts. But there's a constant forward motion, driven by an over-riding vision and a goal. In my case, it is to come to this point: the last paragraph and the last word. Period.