Blank Page Blues

The Road to Published: Sharing discoveries, mistakes, and insights as a new author wends from the blank page to a published book in hand

“Okay, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose. So fucking what?”
- Angela Carter

Courtesy of

Lincoln Michel

’s

Counter Craft

“Angela Carter and the ‘So Fucking What?’ Approach to Writing”

Angela Carter

My notebook is made for nobody’s eyes but my own. It’s a completely private space, and I protect that viciously. I will never show anything directly from its pages, and I certainly don’t let anyone have a flick through. This is important, because it gives me the freedom to write anything in it. That might be my darkest thoughts or my fragile feelings; but mostly it’s just terrible writing. I’m allowed to be incoherent, self-pitying, tacky, boring or stupid in this space. It’s nobody else’s business.

This absolute assertion of privacy is fundamental. If you do nothing else, do that.

- Courtesy of

The Clearing by Katherine May

’s “How to keep a writer’s notebook”

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This is for anyone sitting down with their first notebook, journal, or Google doc.

Imagine you’ve somehow closed the door on the world, the kids, the dog, the dishes, the laundry. You’ve got your favorite cuppa, headphones on, and a scented candle for luck. You’re in a comfy chair, you’ve got your best Bic pen, and crack—there’s that new journal opening its empty, gaping maw in front of you. Oh Ford.

Welcome to the Blank Page Blues.

Yes, yes, I know, many of you have been writing for years—millions of words, reams of paper, terabytes of Word docs, you rock ’n’ writer you!—but let’s just pretend you’ve never written a word before.

New novel, new short story, new journal—new home, new baby, new job’s killing you, and you haven’t written in forever—whatever the circumstances and wherever you are on your writing journey, you have looked at a blank page and your mind has gone to ZERO. Nothing. Zippo. Writing who?

In fact, why write at all? Because this is certainly something I’ve said to myself, facing a blank page. What’s the point? Most people don’t even read a book a year.

Why read words off a piece of paper or a tablet when you can watch your stories in movies and on TV (a much more dynamic medium, Shirley) with the actual people and the special effects, and the music! Try to recreate the effect of music on a movie scene, but in a novel or short story. Impossible! The world is moving on from books—who needs ’em?

And yet, let us remember:

Every movie, every TV show, every play, poetry slam, song, speech, or essay starts out as words on a blank page.

Everyone has faced the blank page at some point. I’m sure we could name it something fearsome—Kali, Cruella, or Satan. But maybe we go another way?

What about Mother? Because for every racing heart and churning stomach sitting in front of her, she is also the source of every beautiful thing that’s ever been written down, from love letters to prize-winning novels, from celebrated films to slim books of heartbreaking poetry.

From that most miraculous and universal blank page literally everything is born.

Why? Why not?

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More in this edition:
→ The Chorus of No
→ “Laying track” with Julia Cameron
→ The Artist’s Other Way

Want to catch every edition of “The Road to Published”…?

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