I’ve Got a Blank Space, Maybe

I remember the Apple ad from last year. It was a blinking cursor on a new page, waiting for words and worlds to form. I immediately thought of LOTR, Harry Potter, and – nowhere in the same league but closest home – my own humble novella draft that I have been writing at near-standstill pace for over 13 years now, once nothing but a blank Word document (though in all fairness to Tolkien, his writing predates computers).

I’d like to talk about the moment before you put pen to paper or keypad to word. The excitement of several thoughts jostling each other in your head to come on top and find purchase on print. When you write, erase, write some more, and sometimes even look up synonyms online. When Stream of Consciousness becomes a literary genre in its own right. Your human thoughts and silly words, but ones that can be conjured only by you. There is a moment of discomfort and distraction as you stare at the blank piece of paper or screen, and that’s the ground most fertile for imagination, creative rumination and overflow. Bizarre ideas may sprout and you may reject some of them with glee, but they are your ideas, your lived experiences, taking shape over many months and years of observations, successes, failures, tripping, elbowing, falling and starting again.

Bloomsbury residence of Virginia Woolf (Stream of Consciousness fame)

People are no longer sitting with that discomfort. They open a GenAI window and outsource thinking to GPT, Claude or insert any other AI tool I’m unfamiliar with. Options and ideas are generated for them. So the role changes from creator to editor, and half the creativity is lost in that transition.

If you must, use these tools for dreary work, like tailoring the 100th cover letter for the 1000th job application whose ATS will reject you otherwise. You have to be smart and not outdated. But don’t let the brain atrophy by using a stale reproduction of the same word patterns and styles for work that is supposed to be an extension of you.

I get it that it is perhaps the most difficult task to begin, but that is where beauty lies. Authors have written paeans and shared wisdom on overcoming writer’s block (even if it’s imaginary), and spoken about how consistency can work wonders and beat inspiration. That’s all we need, a little more faith in our abilities and a little less temptation to turn to shortcuts. Friction is where the magic happens, what causes frisson, discovery, workarounds or even exasperation (she who tries and runs away lives to try another day). You need to sit with questions that unsettle you or feelings you want to come to terms with, and make writing your therapeutic outlet. Or any art form really. It’s your contribution to and interpretation of the world.

So get a blank space, baby, and go write your name.