the blank paper method

battling intense imposter syndrome and writers block

I learned the hard way that writer’s block is not a lack of imagination or creativity; it is far more corrosive than that. It is fear. Recently, I was in the middle of a 90k-word writing project when I crested the halfway point and began the highly anticipated (and celebrated) downhill glide toward the words The End. But when I had around 25k left to go, I became unshakably convinced that I was far too stupid and talentless to finish a sentence more.

Every time I talked myself into sitting down to write, my brain would cue up the litany of reasons why no one on God’s green earth would have any interest in my story. And that’s how several months passed with zero progress.

By the time I began working on it again, I was embarrassed, on top of feeling like an impostor and a failure. While I was complaining about this during a family dinner one night, my teen, with a bemused look on his face, said, “Mom, why don’t you just do the blank paper thing?”

When he was much younger, he would become paralyzed with anxiety over his math homework. So, I would take a blank sheet of paper and cover all the problems he needed to do except for the problem he was working on. Not having to see all 15 problems lifted his yoke of anxiety, and he was able to solve one problem at a time.

The blank paper method is simply a way to reorient your focus to only what is directly in front of you and nothing else. The problem for me, though, was that I wasn’t trying to work out simple algebra on a single sheet of paper. My project spans folders and notes and different documents. The only thing missing is some red yarn and a pack of cigarettes, and my project could have easily been mistaken for a conspiracy theory the way it just sprawled all over my desk.

So, I improvised.

Word Counts

I figured out that based on how my manuscript is styled, 1,000 words is roughly three pages. Sometimes, three pages felt like far too much. But one page? That was better than nothing. It was my one algebra problem. I could manage to get through one page.

Soon enough, I could get through two, three, or more. Sometimes I couldn’t. But at least I was writing again, and it felt like I was clawing my way back to productivity.

Ten Minutes

I once heard that it takes your brain around 10 minutes to warm up to anything you’re focusing on. Giving up before you give your brain a fair chance to be firing on all pistons is cheating your mind out of the opportunity to create something.

I quickly adopted the 10-minute rule, and while it did not always help to get me into that sweet zone of focus, at the very least, it gave me the space to reacquaint myself with the habit of sitting down for a set amount of time in front of my project. Even if the words I produced were hot trash at first.

Outline

Sometimes, the block wasn’t about fear so much as poor planning, which led directly to more self-doubt and fear. In those instances, I would return to my outline and staring right back at me was a shoddily organized scene or chapter that needed more time and research.

Not all writers lean heavily on an outline, but I do. When my scaffolding is weak, I tend to fall down. The beauty of outlining is that I don’t have to have all the answers or descriptions to create something I am happy to work with; it just has to give me a sense of direction so that I can write.

Chatterbox

Sometimes, I pretend to be someone else in my head. And that person is a chatterbox and doesn’t give one flying fuck if what they say is “good” or not. They just talk and talk and talk until they are spent. Some call this spontaneous prose. I call it giving my characters room to vent. I may not end up using any of what gets written, and that is fine. The goal is to write without fear.

At some point, I had to decide if I was going to be a coward and give up or if I would be brave enough to tell the negative voices to fuck right off. I knew that even if nothing ever happened with this manuscript, it still had to get written, or I would never let go of the worry about whether or not I was good enough to do it. So, eventually, I got to the part where I wrote The End. And I cried.

Now that I know my writer’s block was about fear, I have created a pile of tried and true versions of the blank paper method that work to pull me out of that awful place. And I hope that one or some of these versions will work for you, too.

Thank you for reading <3