The Compelling Blank Page

I sit here at my desk, the keyboard staring me in the face – yes, I look at the keys. I have no clue how to actually type – and the screen casting a white glow over the letters and I wait. Inspiration is a real b*tch. It often hits me when I can’t reach the computer, like while I’m washing the dishes, driving the car, using the..uh…facilities. My mind fills with a multitude of things, related and unrelated, that I can hardly contain, begin almost immediately to lose, and I ache for the keys to save my thoughts from the void that exists just this side of the screen.

Then there are moments like this one. Moments where it almost hurts not to write, not to compose, not to tell some tale, any tale, and I can’t. The words, even though they must be there somewhere, refuse to come. And I sit, fingers on the keys, the right ones only because I know to put certain fingers on the letters with the raised spots, and wait. It’s like having restless legs in your head and your fingers. I want to write. I need to write. If I don’t write something I am pretty sure I’ll do some thing desperate in order to make the words come.

I will let the dishes pile up, the laundry go unwashed, unfolded, and scattered on the couch. I will forget to buy groceries. I will sit in an awkward position at a non-ergonomic desk and torture my back waiting. I will snarl at my kids and growl at my husband and foam at the mouth with this need and I will not apologize.

It’s like needing to breathe. I’m quite certain that brain cells would die if I were forced to stop writing, made to refrain from trying. To refuse this drive would be akin to suicide. Is that too strong a comparison? I don’t think so. My creative drive is such an essential part of who I am that if I were stripped of it, stripped of my ability to express it, then I don’t know how I could put one foot in front of the other on a day-to-day basis. It would be like trying to breathe without lungs. Impossible.

~ Peace and passion