How To Write Without Staring At A Blank Page Ever Again
By Tim Edwards
Are you thinking about writing a book? Do you have an idea for an article?
If you have thought about it, write the idea or piece of information down now, so you will have it when you need it. Sitting in front of a blank computer screen, is actually not the time to think about what your subject should be. Make that decision before you begin the physical act of writing.
Keep track of your book and article ideas by writing them down. It is an essential way to ensure that you do not forget important points you want to cover. In addition, when it comes time to sit down and start writing, you will have a file of one-liners and paragraphs of ideas for inspiration and guidance.
You may hear it called a tickler file. It may be a physical notebook, a spreadsheet, or just a windows notepad file. In my case the idea is scribbled down on whatever is handy, and then transferred to a spreadsheet. For some reason I plug the date in when I create the entry, not sure what purpose that serves, other than beating myself up for not acting on an idea I had three months ago. (side note to self: delete date column).
Do you remember going to a class, the teacher, with a sly grin, telling you to open up your notebook and write 500 words on what you thought or how you felt about blah, blah, blah. For the majority of us, this was painfully difficult. I used to be a firm believer that there was a reason teacher and torture both started with a “T”.
You had no idea what blah was. Had never thought about blah and certainly had no intentions to ever write anything about blah.
Can you imagine a writer, a professional, someone that makes their living writing and does it all the time, sitting down to a blank page and saying, , “OK, now what kind of article, book, essay, story am I going to write about…”. For a rare few, Isaac Asimov is the only one I can think of, the tickler file may exist in their head, they toss the ideas around, reshaping, and forming, and when the idea is ready, then they do a brain dump to the page and out pops an article. For the rest of us, the real world, we need a physical tickler file as a starting point and a point of reference.
Don’t waste one second looking at a blank page. If you don’t already know what to write about, look through your tickler file. If you don’t have a tickler file, then work on that. While it will definitely build over time, there is no reason you can’t write a page of ideas, one-liners, even abstract off the wall stuff in one sitting to get your tickler file started. Keep adding to it, then when you want to write an article check that file and start writing. Never stare at another blank page again.
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