The Blank Page

The blank page. Every writer’s nightmare, or if not a nightmare, the fear that bugs us most of the time. What shall I write about? If only I could write a novel. But it is not given to me to write novels, or anything at all at the moment, though I have stories to tell.

Whatever it is that occludes my thinking right now, the blank page represents an awesome reality. Awesome is  a word that is used far too lightly nowadays. To be in awe of something is to reverence it, to be subject to it. A writer is always subject to the blank page. They are subject to the work. They owe it.

The blank page isn’t just about not being able to write anything right now. For the writer, being faced with the blank page represents a kind of death, not some elevated intellectual state trying to give shape to itself with words, but more what it must feel like to lose physical speech after a stroke or accident and be unable to articulate thought, unable to convey need.  

The blank page must ultimately convey something to the reader. It must resonate in some way with their need. What is written must be to the reader what Joyce described as an ‘epiphany’. It must reveal a sudden understanding of truth, not a specifically empirical or exclusively moral truth, but something the reader has always known but never realised they knew until the moment of reading. Writers enable us to discover for the first time something that is intimately familiar. God perhaps. They may or may not intend doing this.

The blank page, which is too often conflated with writer’s block, makes for an end of the road feeling. You will tell yourself that things will open up when you feel less tired, have a coffee – or something stronger, smoke a cigarette – or something stronger. Or perhaps you should just stop and take up crochet instead.  But the blank page admonishes you. It does not give you permission to shut the computer down or close the notebook. From the moment you first put finger to keyboard, or pencil to paper way back in your school days, when your English teacher thought you showed promise, you were committed. The commitment was not a decision on your part. It was made by someone else, voiced through someone else (your English teacher, perhaps) or else through accruing experiences that cohered into plots of one kind or another, or ideas that needed to be given shape so that they could connect with people and give shape to their own ideas, or a meaning of some kind to their life.

None of this is guaranteed to fill the blank page, of course. Thoughts do not flow in a mystical way onto a screen or notebook. They are honed, often out of nothing, or out of the mere whisper of a thought. But it is not the thought that counts right now. It is the blank page which exists for itself. It has its own life. It makes demands. Perhaps, in this sense, it has a certain religious side to it. But treating any creative process as a religious exercise of some kind is dangerous. It invites self delusion, for one thing, and grandiosity, which is death to writing and to any genuinely creative work. So you could say that it is best to keep self completely out of the picture, whatever the picture is, because we are not talking about self expression. We are talking about the kind of creativity which only comes to fruition through self discipline.

In art, as in life, self discipline is not a very exciting exercise, so it has to be learned early. I learned the need for it from the nuns at school whose parting words of advice to sixth form leavers were to get up in the morning at whatever time you’d resolved you would get up, no matter how late or early. It seemed inconsequential at the time, as a life resolution, but it has been invaluable to me as a writer. Sit in front of the blank screen or page regardless of what it gives, or doesn’t give, at any one time, but do it at the same time every day. Do the same thing with prayer, along with anything else you might resolve to do on any given day.

Heat

I wonder if all writers experience the purgatory of titles, by which I mean being presented with an endless string of widely differing subjects but having absolutely nothing to say about any of them. Perhaps it is the natural hubris that comes with the work we do that persuades us that we should always have an opinion to hand, no matter what the circumstances.

Take ‘heat’, for example. Heat is the prevailing circumstance right now, as I see it. Everything else, even the most serious and demanding issues facing us, will evaporate under its impact. Heat lends urgency to the moment, so the necessities of life take precedence over any thoughts or ideas that we writers, in our hubristic way, think will benefit the reader out there. It’s more important to get those two bits of ironing done before 8.30am, so that you can break the monotony of only having two garments to wear that are remotely suited to these unprecedented temperatures. Ironing takes precedence over thinking about anything, let alone writing about it. The same goes for walking the dog and unloading the dishwasher, even though the dog would probably be happy to remain cross legged until 10pm, but my conscience qualms at the thought of letting this happen to him.

And now that I have finally sat down, the moist heat is building, like a kind of tsunami. I will tell myself, for another hour or so, that it’s not that hot, that I should be thankful I don’t live in a city and should just brace up and get on with it, but I know I will run out of stamina and focus quite soon, an excuse to call up to my husband for one of his iced coffee frappés.

The whole creative process seems subject to the weight of the heat. The struggle to think is not a struggle with nothing. It is a struggle with the overwhelming nature of everything right now. It might be easier to put off trying. But if a writer stops trying in the belief, perhaps, that there is nothing to say or, if there is, that someone else has already said it better, then fear very soon takes over.  The writer fears that the ‘gift’, or whatever it is that magically allows us to string together a few ideas in a coherent fashion, will be withdrawn, perhaps as a kind of punishment for not trying hard enough, for not sticking at it. Perhaps, when the heat subsides, there will be payback time for all those mornings we’ve skipped, telling ourselves to get the ironing done, the dog walked, the shopping done, before it gets too hot. Writers live in fear of retribution, even ones who, like me, pray quite a lot.

When it comes to prayer and creativity, we are always swimming underwater. We are in our element, but also desperately coming up for air. We wait in the deep blue world, but there are no fish and no mesmeric changes of light, just blueness pressing us down, as the psalmist puts it; ‘You press upon me behind and before. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.’ (Ps. 139:5)

And yet we are invited to reach for this knowledge, if ‘reaching’ is what we do. We are being invited to reach deep for the wisdom that is beyond human grasping. So we reach and we wait, along with the millions of creative people who are reaching for an idea, too often making the mistake of thinking we will find it within the narrow confines of our own acquired skills or learned knowledge. And, as with the creative process, we often try too hard. Things happen when we stop trying and wanting. That is when the light breeze makes itself felt.

To live prayerfully is to live creatively, to go with the rhythm of the day itself, especially the ponderous rhythm of unending heat. To live prayerfully is to go with the rhythm of God, to be always ready, to wait but also to reach deep, to do nothing, but to be ready. By this I don’t mean brace yourself for an experience of some kind. We do not experience God when we pray. We simply allow ourselves to be known by God and that requires patience on God’s part, as well as ours, and a certain courage. You never know what might happen next.

Keeping Busy

“Keeping busy?” is the question that retired people get asked.  Perhaps the person asking the question reckons that a retired person has nothing left to live for, apart from filling the void left by the ‘busyness’ which has been taken from them through retirement.

The question is loaded with anxiety. The person asking it may be worrying about their own impending retirement and the spectre of idleness which it raises. It also leads into far deeper questions pertaining to the meaning of life itself.

We do not live, in the fullest sense, by keeping busy.  Neither, for that matter, are we truly rich when we have simply made a lot of money or acquired power or status during the course of our professional lives. Money and status are only of use in this lifetime, in any case, and there is still that part of us that achievements and attributes fail to satisfy, or ‘reach’.

Retirement focuses this truth, which until now was only vaguely apprehended, into reality. Left to ourselves, we are faced not so much with the past (although the past is significant in shaping our thoughts about the present) as with the present moment and with the increasingly relevant idea of eternity. Unlike life as we know it now, eternity has no future. It is an eternal present moment. Having to be still and resist the need to be busy allows us a glimpse of eternity, of a sense of the brevity of our lives and of the significance of the present moment.

Being still and contemplating eternity places our life in a wider dimension. It gives a life greater significance, rather than less. It also begs two further questions; will we be wealthy in the only way that matters in this eternal dimension? In other words, will we have lived richly towards God? And will we have lived gratefully?

Living richly towards God means allowing every present moment to become our whole life, to live it fully and gratefully, however insignificant it may seem. The mystery and beauty of eternity is composed of all the seemingly insignificant moments that have been fully lived, lived with integrity, beauty, courage, generosity and humour.

So the question we are faced with when it comes to keeping busy is whether or not we are living, in the fullest sense of the word. And were we really living when we were busy working? The creative ‘rush’ that makes for fulfilling work is of a piece with the energy of a creating God, a God who is still creating. This energy is what makes the ‘rush’ of creativity endure, or ‘bear fruit’ into our later years.

Part of being creative involves enabling the creativity of others, of colleagues, friends and family. It also involves gratitude. Gratitude only really begins when we meet the creator God at the deepest level of our being. Gratitude restores creativity. It also gives us permission to be grateful for being who we are. Retirement is not just a matter of getting through another empty day by keeping busy. Each day is the beginning of a whole new phase of creative living. It is the beginning of eternity.