Staring At The Blank Page Before You Novels & Stories

What would it look like. The beginning of every real thing. Sera looked at the blank page. At the question. At the room around her. At twenty-three people who had built the answer to the last version of this question. Who had built it from nothing. One step at a time. One page at a time. One person at a time. She thought about the first blank page. More than a year ago. In a different context. With fewer people. With less knowledge. With the same fundamental act.

The sentence doesn’t come. The cursor blinks after “him” – steady, a small black line appearing and disappearing on the screen like a heartbeat that’s waiting for the rest of the body to show up. I sit at the table in the quiet apartment with the coffee maker beeping and my body still buzzing and the manuscript holding one line that says everything and nothing, and the blinking feels less like a cursor and more like a question I don’t have the answer to yet.

I opened my mouth. I had a line for this. I'd practiced it in the car, in the elevator, in the mirror that morning. I knew the words. I could feel the shape of them sitting right there, ready. Nothing came out. Not a stutter, not a stumble — nothing, a total blank, like someone had reached into my head and pulled the plug on the entire sentence mid-search. The silence stretched half a second, then a full second, which in a room full of cameras is an eternity, long enough for me to watch three separate reporters lean forward, sensing it, the way sharks apparently sense blood from a mile off.

I opened the pad and flicked through to find a clean page, several of them had been taken up with what started as words and ended up as angry scratchings and deep scores. I sat there, frozen for a time as I stared at the blank page. Shaking myself internally for overthinking something that should be easy, from the heart. I touched the pen to the paper. 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears....', I snorted at my thoughts. Seriously Annalita, get a grip. As my head bowed down, poised to write the most important speech in my academic career, my long hair covered my face, shielding me further from distractions, except for that annoying tapping sound....I soon realised that it was me, m

(Flashback) 'Babe?' I was staring at the screen of my laptop, frustrated by my brain's stubbornness. I had a paper due soon and no matter what I did or wrote, it did not seem enough to me. All of a sudden, the screen went blank and I looked up to see that Raymond had turned it off. 'Raymond!' I protested. 'You've been staring at that computer for hours. Time for a break.' He said with an eyebrow raised in concern. I ran my hand down my face as I let out a heavy sigh. 'I know, I just…'

I listened to their footsteps retreat down the hallway, and once I was sure they were gone, I finally turned my attention back to the screen. The blank page stared back at me, taunting me. Where to begin? I hadn’t really thought this through. All I knew was that David's letter wasn't what I wanted. But what was it that I DID want? My mind was swimming with a million thoughts and words and I had no clue where to start. What was my end goal here? What message did I want to convey to them? I took a deep breath, my fingers poised over the keys. "Just fucking start, Kate," I told myself. "You can always delete it if you aren't happy."

Edward asked her in a purposefully calm voice. However, when he seemed to notice something, he softly said, “Hmm.” Then, he plucked the white piece of paper in front of her and examined the words on it. Vivian had a habit of doodling on paper whenever she was lost in her thoughts. However, she was not thinking about anything important prior to this. ‘The paper in front of me is a blank piece of paper, so what’s there to see?’ she wondered. She was taken aback at first. Then, she regained her senses and realized that she had been writing something on that paper. She felt as if there was a buzzing sound in her brain. She was so shocked that her mind had actually gone blank.

It is the record, in physical form, of everything the six years have built. He finished the coffee. He opened the journal to the next blank page. The page was January-white, the color of possibility, the color of a year that had not yet written itself. He left it blank. He would write in it later, in the evening, when the day had completed itself and he could see what it had been. For now, the blankness was appropriate. January was the month of intention before legibility. The blank page was January's proper symbol.

The board clear. Maya places the pencil over the page. Nothing comes. She waits. Still nothing. There is no next crisis large enough to stand where ARBITER stood. No disaster waiting politely to become a heading. And the silence is not empty. It has a shape. A hole behind her left eye, exactly the size of a voice that is becoming quieter by the day. Maya holds the pencil above the blank page for a long time. Then she closes the notebook. She writes nothing. For once, there is no list capable of holding what comes next.

It was possible, it truly was, for her to be the author of her own destiny. She settled down and turned the first page. The book was blank. Her heart began to thud painfully. It couldn’t be. Why would there be no words? Caitlin ran her fingers along the blank pages, one after the other, turning the pages furiously. There was nothing here, nothing for her to rely on, no advice or truths to turn to. Just nothing. Tears flooded her eyes. How could it be that after everything she had gone through, she was still without the answer she so desperately sought?