This week was Spring Break for me so naturally I got sloshed on wine coolers. No wait! I wrote and brainstormed A LOT. (And then got sloshed.)
There’s something both so wonderful and also so upsetting about the blank page. Because I turned in my novel to my beta readers, I’ve wanted to work on short, weird things. I have a file of “story ideas,” some of which are documents with literally one phrase. I suppose not technically blank, therefore, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I was thinking.
So I start a new page, and start over; and I ask myself, what makes me angry? What makes me deliriously ecstatic? What emotion do I want to explore, what moment can I express in a concrete and poignant way? And when I’m staring at the blank page, I often have no idea.
I know that morning pages are supposed to help with this. I’ve read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and did morning pages all last summer. I’m not sure it really helped me. It did help when I remembered and wrote down my dreams. I’m a firm believer that you generate dreams that mean something to you, and if you can zoom in on what that dream-moment felt like, that would be a great seed for a story.
This weekend, I’m looking forward to recording another podcast session with my co-hosts at Genre Hustle, attending my weekly critique group, and going to a double feature of Patrick Swayze movies on St. Patrick’s Day!
Happy Friday!