by Jared Vineyard

Created on: January 11, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

The blank page is a formidable foe to the beginning writer. Even the experienced writer can struggle against this enemy. A page seems bigger, sometimes unending, when it is blank. The first mistake of the beginning writer is to look at the blank page. It is lady Medusa; if she catches you looking at her, she'll turn you to stone. I've never seen a stone spew a single creative idea.

Write. Don't look at the page, just write. "Yet, I don't know what to write about," says the new writer. Or even worse, the new writer may say, "I don't have anything to write about." The former sentence may very well be true; but, the latter is never true.

There is not a person alive who does not have a story to tell. In fact, there is not a person alive without many, many stories to tell. There are many who feel they do not have anything worth saying, but even that is a fallacy. Every person, no matter how dense, has learned things throughout the course of their life. Every single day there are countless things happening in and around each of our lives. All of these things are ready to go into our stories, but let's be pragmatic. How does one actually start writing.

The simple answer is with a word. Put a word on the paper to keep it from being blank. Every story is written one word at a time. And every story has words deleted from it before the story is finished. So we all have stories to tell, but pulling them out and making them interesting is the difficult part.

If you want an imaginative story, you have to exercise your imagination. Watch movies, read stories, go to plays, listen to music, watch people around you. Then go beyond these simple stimulations to actually flexing the muscles of your imagination. Imagine things. Picture things. What would it look like if there were a tree in the middle of that street. Grow one in your mind and visualize it. What would that lady, rushing down the street, bundled in her fur coat, say if you stepped into her path and told her she was beautiful. What would she do if you called her ugly? Of course you don't know; make it up! Hey, why does she have to be a woman? Maybe she's an android or an alien.

Be as ridiculous and off the wall as you can. How far can you stretch your imagination? Try to take it to the limit and you'll see there isn't one. You can always reel in a story that seems to be too carried away. It's when the story you're creating doesn't seem imaginative to begin with that it is hard to make it so. Well, what are you waiting for? That page is still blank. In the words of Captain Picard, "Make it so!"

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