The Blank Sheet (or Writer's Block)

Apologies for the delay in producing this blog.  But the blank sheet is exactly what I've been suffering from.  A common condition for all creative people.

Many of you who have contributed tweets or read my blogs are creative people, writers, artists, perhaps musicians too.  So you all know about the blank sheet and understand the hesitancy contemplating that untouched emptiness, like a fresh fall of snow staring at you, and waiting for the first mark to be made.  But it's also exhilarating; that launch into the unknown.  It's what keeps us all buzzing, what life is about.

 For travellers too, the blank corner of the map is worrying.  What's there?  Why hasn't it been filled in with cartographical information.  Or perhaps it's just incorrect guesswork filling the gap, as I sometimes found on my treks in #WalksontheWildSide?  An intriguing opportunity to explore, or a scary void?

The important thing about writing, painting, playing an instrument, or even drawing a map, is that they are all languages.  A way of communicating.  And they are very similar because they all portray an image.  They all tell a story.  They are all different ways of constructing a plot.  Choosing verbs and adjectives is like choosing colours, or juxtaposing harmonies and discords.  Should this description be hot or cold, abrasive or calming?  Building a picture.  Playing with the images being created in the reader/viewer/listener's brain.  It's very exciting.  Creativity is exciting.  And intimidating.  Because it's easy to get it wrong.

Vasari, in his descriptions of the North Italian Renaissance painters, used to talk about 'making' a picture, not painting one, because it's a technical process, in those days also involving grinding the pigments and applying the 'fresco' plaster etc.  So also with writing, not just stringing words together to transmit an idea but filling it with flavours and nuances.  Or for a musician building sounds into a complex structure which colours the airwaves and transcends into the shimmering peace of a flat sea or a raging hurricane.

Every writer knows that the story is the easy bit.  It's how it's told that matters.  The mixing of words, like colours on a palette, is the really important and often complicated bit.  Of course there are technical issues to be respected (or consciously abandoned) like spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.  Every tiny dab of the brush, scrape of the palette knife, the lightest semi quaver, is part of making this vital image.  Creative artists sweat blood over these details.

And it all starts with a blank sheet.  Maybe the brain is teeming with conflicting ideas.  Maybe there's just a vague abstract notion of the eventual colour that is wanted, the rough shapes.  We're in the realms of scouring the imagination, stretching the mind.  Even digging deep into the soul.  Some writers like John Clare went insane.  Some of the best creativity walks a gossamer thin tightrope between brilliance and madness, and can spill over either way.  Or both.  John Dryden wrote, in Absalom and Achitophel, 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide'.  Some creative artists border alcoholic oblivion, like Dylan Thomas who somehow managed to sharpen his perception through whisky, until he destroyed himself.  The creation of beauty, the agonies of birth, the glory of pulling together the impossible. 

But faced with the blank sheet a painter friend insists that it is of paramount importance 'to attend'.  Like any job of work, if you don't 'attend' in your studio, study or music room and worry at it like a dog with a bone, it won't just happen of its own accord.

Although brilliance is rare, most of us do our damnedest to cover the ground with our feet of clay and stretch our fingers towards the unattainable perfection.  It's a journey worth making, a goal to strive for, a secret joy to achieve.  All starting with the same blank sheet. 

And now suddenly I've filled it!