"Blank Page" Syndrome RX

Greetings! Have you ever been stuck on a blank page. I'm there today. The big white box of my blog is staring at me and I've got nada -- a big bad case of "Blank Page" syndrome. What's the RX? So here I am doing what I've done a thousands times before. Not worrying about it and pressing on anyway. Fill up the page with gosh awful work. Sometimes it'a all you can do to fill up some white space on a page. That's an achievement.

Another thing to do for "blank page" syndrome is go read a book. Go look at some art and call it work! Try taking a walk and soaking up the sights and sounds and smells. Listen carefully to some music. This process is a little interesting because you don't feel it changing you. Just disappear into the activity and when you come out of it. It will have fuelled you. Creative energy will surge inside you. I don't understand this process fully but it does work.

Finally, in the throes of "Blank Page" syndrome, I copy something. I mean, not clip and paste, but actually writing each word that someone else has written and feeling what they felt when they put those words on the page. I draw every line, copy every brush stroke of some provocative piece of art. Something in me me likes to mimic. I feel myself learning when I do this exercise. My muse comes back to me and more, the things I've learned are there in me, shoring up every word I write.

I hope you are helped by my "Blank Page" RX. I hope that you create your best works yet. Peace. See ya next week.

Here is the doodle. Thousands of years ago, an artist decided to draw a picture of a bird on a rock. Here are some thoughts I had as copied this at the Petroglyph National Monument. The artist saw the soul of this bird as a smiley face and that seemed right to me. This was one happy bird about to snag lunch. And that is it, isn't it, the joy of having another meal and existing another moment. This exercise is fuel for the artistic soul. Go copy something.



My quote for the week:

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. Socrates