Bad or Blank

In Editing and Performing from Sioux's Page, Sioux asks,

“Do you have lots of bad pages now or lots of blank pages?”

One of the hardest things I find about writing is actually getting started.  Sometimes I find the blank page very overwhelming. I know when I was first married and my husband was taking college classes, he had a hard time writing for his class also. I remember telling him to just get started. Write something down. Anything.

I used to tell my students that writing something with lots of errors is worth more points than not writing anything at all. If I see something written, I can tell there was some kind of effort put into the writing. If nothing is on the paper, I can’t give credit for thoughts.

Sometimes when I don’t know what to write, I look for inspiration from other blogs. Just like I quoted Sioux’s blog at the top of this page. Sometimes by just putting the quote down, I can feel thoughts going through my head. I try to jot down the thoughts and not worry about the order because I’m afraid I will forget some of my thoughts.

After I have my thoughts down, I can go back and sort through the details. Sometimes I can take things out or add more detail. Sometimes I can rearrange so the flow is smoother. But if there is a blank page, I have nothing to work with.

Sometimes I copy quotes and paste them on blank pages. Then I save them in a file so when I need a writing prompt, it will be there. Sometimes I look at them and wonder what in the world was I thinking about when I copied it and other times I still know why it was important to me.  I’m all the time looking for words of wisdom or inspiration for future writing. 

Sometimes I feel like my life is a lot the same. I want to try new things and feel so overwhelmed that I’m afraid to try. I have a “blank page” with the new skill. Then I try to remind myself that trying and making mistakes is much better than doing nothing at all. In fact, I’m not even sure that I will have a “bad” page if I don’t even try. I might be successful and not have a “bad” page at all.

But it is really hard to get past the blank page. It doesn’t matter how old I am or what I’ve done in the past, blank pages are hard to work on! I like to think that I have more “bad” pages than “blank” pages because I don’t want to go through life with regrets. I don’t want to regret that I really wanted to do something and didn’t try it because I was afraid of failure.

Do you have “bad” or “blank” pages? Please share.

Image: 'Blank Pages In An Open Notebook'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40645538@N00/4812269151
Found on flickrcc.net