Clamouring to become visible...

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Stuff website on November 25, 2007. By coincidence this week I wrote this post, which is thematically similar. The original text can be found here.

Stay Drunk

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” - Vladimir Nabokov.

A pristine white page. A blinking cursor on a fresh new Word file. However you write, these are the most terrifying and the most beautiful prospects a writer sees. More so than the finished product. (Frankly, some of my finished products I never want to see again…)

The blank page is absolutely terrifying. It is a daunting prospect, a new vista. You and you alone are responsible for what will fill it up. The page is not going to fill itself up, the computer will not mysteriously begin typing on its own. It is all down to you. The responsibility, the pressure, the expectation. All squarely on your shoulders.

That scares the hell out of me. There is nothing like a blank page to make you freeze. And once frozen, that expectation grows. Aren’t you a writer? Shouldn’t you be, y’know, writing? On this page?

The blank page is absolutely beautiful. It is potential, it is possibility, it is all your dreams come true at once, because it can literally be anything. It is waiting to be filled with whatever flight of fancy occurs to you. Is it a love story? Is it something chilling? A hilarious farce? A tragic catastrophe? The blank page calls to you and invites you to let loose all your inhibitions and throw it all onto the page.

I love that quote from Nabokov (I like it so much that I used it to name my writing blog!). Whenever I feel daunted by the blank page, I remind myself of that quote, to remind me that the blank page is not just a frightening unexplored country. It is the destination for my thoughts. The words are already there, they have always been there. It is for me to discover them and reveal them to the world.

This advice from Nabokov is one of a few that inspire me, and keep me on course. It inspires me when I am challenged in my writing, but the quotation that inspires me most, the one that keeps me focused as a writer, was left to me by a friend and fellow writer. She encouraged me to view writing as more than something I “could” do in the future. This quote always inspired her, and she passed it on to me:

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” - Ray Bradbury

Reality is work. Reality is other commitments. Reality is life getting in the way. Reality is a voice telling you that you cannot write a book in a month, that 50,000 words is an impossible target, and that nobody would be interested in anything you have to say.

So stay drunk on your writing folks. Ignore that little bit of “reality” that tells you it can’t be done, and questions why you are even bothering. Because on that blank page, you can make your own reality.

And if you have your own favourite writing quotations, ones that inspire you and drive you on, perhaps you’ll share...