The blank page.

Always a daunting sight as I begin to write. Uncluttered, pristine; it sits, daring me to sully its surface with my scribbling. Yet, somehow, every time I try, words appear. Letters arranged with thought. Punctuation, too.

Perhaps more difficult is returning the next day to those words, those pages, already completed. I puzzle over where I was going, what meaning I was attempting to provide, and who these particular characters are supposed to be. Picking up the threads of thought from the day prior is typically far more difficult than the existence of an empty sheet of paper.

Capturing the mood, the style, the dynamic of the previous day’s writing is often impossible. So I read and reread what has come before in hopes of moving forward. There are words, lines, and paragraphs that lay about the page grinning up at me saying “See how clever you were yesterday. The bet is on that you can’t be that way today.” Others look at me ruefully wondering how this particular arrangement of words could possibly have been worth the time and energy to have been placed on the page just so.

Characters with wit one day now sit patiently waiting for me to continue the sass and vigor with which they entered the story. Language that they stimulated by who they were becoming disappears as their potential twiddles thumbs and rolls eyes heavenward in despair of my finding them again.

The words already existent beg the question, “now what?” There is a presentiment of failure in their mere being. So, rather than wrestle with the possibilities of the “what if” and the probabilities of “because”, another blank page is more likely to appear as the easier path to follow. New ideas, new characters, and new potentials.