Are you afraid of the blank page?

Everything starts with nothing, and that's okay.

If I leave a stationery shop without buying a new notebook, consider it an SOS.

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. In reality, it’s because they were:

1. so wide ruled you could land a plane on the pages

2. emblazoned with corny affirmations¹

3. sold out (boo)

I can’t leave a blank book of possibilities behind. Walking down an aisle, I pick them up one by one. I flick through the pages and daydream about their destiny.

Oh, isn’t this a pretty cover?

You’d be forgiven for thinking this must mean I own overflowing bookcases, each brimming with rows upon rows of completed volumes. Shelves bowing under the weight of passing thoughts and grand ideas.

Wouldn’t this look darling gathering dust?

In my notebook graveyard, many are half-finished or barely started. Some have missing pages, torn out in frustration. An embarrassingly large number of them are untouched.

Am I good enough for this one?

The special occasion is happening right now

In the book community, it’s often said that buying books and reading books are two completely different hobbies. Apparently there’s even a Japanese term for it:

“Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.”²

I’ve noticed the same seems to be true for stationery and art supplies. I’m guilty of hoarding stickers, always waiting for the ideal moment that never arrives. I save it for best, only for it to go bad. (Did you know that the roll of washi tape you’ve been saving will lose its stick eventually? Ask me how I know…)

However, unlike books or stickers, when you buy a new sketchbook or notebook, it’s empty. The blank page tells you nothing. It wants everything. There are endless possibilities. A tree became a notebook, only to take root as a suffocating forest of figs in my mind.³

What am I saving it for?

Peeking into pages

There aren’t many sketchbook tours and flip through videos on YouTube that I haven’t seen. I’ve probably watched thousands. I remember looking for page layout inspiration for my art classes back in school, trawling through ideas and tips to make the ‘perfect’ spread.

Turns out it’s actually really difficult to hold such chunky art journals still!

Maybe I’m just nosey, but peeking into the pages of someone else’s notebooks and sketchbooks is fascinating (and slightly addicting). The screen is a window into a stranger’s creative process, scattered with scribbles on post-it notes and doodles in the margins.

What do they find interesting? What captures their attention? How can I create like them? I’d take notes of the themes that were hidden in between the swatches of their new watercolour paints. Maybe one day mine will be as magical as theirs, if only I knew the secret.

Made by imperfect hands

Sometimes I find myself paralysed by the fear of making the wrong mark. In my junk journals, the pages don’t match. No page is truly ‘blank’. There’s always something to respond to. Despite the looming blank page, I have a stack of them, many of which I’ve made by hand.

Stacks of art journals on my bookshelves

Now, I’m by no means a bookbinding expert. I hate measuring, so my pages are wonky. I improvise with the supplies I have on hand, so they might not stand the test of time. And I have a terrible tendency to eyeball everything, which at least makes them one of a kind.

“I hate it because it looks like me. It bleeds with disgusting sincerity, elegant in theory and clumsy in execution. The shadows of my room bend towards me slowly, whispering darkness, sowing doubt. What I feared came true: that if I put my whole being into this work, I would be faced with the knowledge that I’m not as good as I think I am.”
— An act of creation is always an act of betrayal, Frivolous by Victoria

It’s so easy to not like what we make precisely because it looks like we made it. When we see someone else’s work, we only see the curated highlights. We’ll never see the torn out pages, the ones they secretly hate, or the layers covering a little mistake.

Why are we fighting the blank page?

Beat the block. Overcome the struggle. Face the fear. Every time I turn the page, the battle continues. Who’s afraid of little old blank page? All of us, apparently.

When writing this, I considered putting together a list of ‘remedies’. An antidote to the blank page. But I’m not sure that exists, because without the blank page, what can we create?

Everything starts with nothing. You won’t have all the answers at the start. So what happens when you start anyway?

Prompts

Every fortnight I collect snippets, elements and colours for you to use in your creative practice. I invite you to take whatever sparks curiosity back to your journal and start making art.

I used the last set of prompts about play to make this zine. You can watch the process of how I made it on YouTube.

Mini zine: Bloom

Our theme for this edition is the blank page.

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
— Jodi Picoult

“Because every day is all there is.”
— Joan Didion

“If you feel blocked, there is probably a deeper reason. Perhaps it is fear; perhaps it is exhaustion; perhaps you aren’t ready to tackle a particular subject; perhaps something else is occupying your mind.”
— Jillian Hess, Re-Noted: 4 Cures for Writer's Block that Actually Work
(Highly recommend reading the full piece!)

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Nature’s ‘blank page’ from my beach walk: a clear, crisp sky meets the sea.

1. The last time I was in TK Maxx, I spotted one with a ramen bowl illustration on the cover. ‘The only men I need is ramen.’ I mean, valid, but why?

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku

3. “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. […] I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar