500 Words: Not another blank page

He used to fear a blank page. The bright white of the screen filling the entire room with light, but he felt as if he was in complete darkness, his brain no longer capable of functioning as it should. When he was off doing something else it felt as if ideas were constantly trying to force their way out into the world, desperate to be heard, but now he was in front of his computer it appeared those thoughts had retreated to an inaccessible part of his mind. Locked away by the inescapable fear that they weren’t worthy of being viewed. By anyone. Including himself.

He sat and stared desperately waiting for inspiration to strike. Minutes passed by, but it felt like hours. He’d read countless books and heard many writers all giving the same advice: “Just write. Write anything, but just write.” It seemed liked a monumental waste of time. Why waste precious brain space on nothing. Surely it would be better to wait for the right words, than just anything. But of course, they were right.

He wrote. Gobbledygook at first but then a few sentences, and then a few paragraphs, and then before he knew it, he had a page. Granted, most of it was worthless but there were a couple of lines within it that triggered an idea. He began whittling down the 700 or so words he had written until it had become just five or six sentences. But those sentences had fired his synapses and ideas began to crash through his brain like an incoming tide.

He struggled to keep up with his thoughts, but he didn’t want to stop in case the tide went out as quickly as it had come in. He pounded at the keys and could see that there were lots of squiggly red lines, but he wouldn’t let them distract him. He didn’t want to stop; he could fix it after, but he just needed to get these words down before they were lost in the deep recesses of his mind forever.

The page was almost full again. Sure, the odd word here and there may need tightening, and of course those squiggly red lines would need attending to, but overall, he had far more confidence in what he was now seeing laid out in front of him.

Who were these people, what were they going to do, where were they going and why? Why them, why now? He began to re-read what he had written. Yes, this definitely had some potential. He made a few obvious changes that were needed and then began to rid the page of those mocking red squiggles. He added a few more lines and read back from the top of the page again. Yes, this was definitely going somewhere. The once feared blank page now had almost endless possibilities. 

He pressed return and a new blank page came into view, the room filled with light once more, he smiled and began to type.