Starting off on a new creative endeavour can be a time full of fun, energy and optimism.
You think about all the things you’ll do, and make, and learn, and how this approach is going to be different, sizzlingly different, from those that have gone before.
You get everything ready: maybe create a sparkling new website, or declare your intention to commit to a new daily / weekly practice, or buy yourself some new materials. (Gorgeous notebooks and journals can be particular culprits here 
)
Then, all ready, primed and raring to go… you stop.
Your words freeze.
Your mind goes blank.
Your creativity: kaput.
What’s going on?
Well, it’s generally the blankness of the page or the beauty of the endeavour that’s putting you off.
You want your work – your photos, art work, pieces of writing, journal entries, poems – you want your contributions to be good enough (if not perfect) for the new space you’ve bought, created or carved out for yourself.
The simplest way round it?
Just get started.
Make a mark. Create something deliberately imperfect. Do something that’s small, a doodle, just practice.
Tell yourself it’s just a warm up (so much easier that way).
Getting Past the Blankness of the Page
Just find a way to get going, to connect up your self with the space you’ve created for yourself.
No matter whether this is a digital space or good old fashioned pen and paper, getting started is enough to change the look and feel of your canvas. Before long, the page doesn’t look so blank or so daunting. It becomes marked, textured, worn.
Inviting.
Yours.
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Written, at least in part, to help me get into the writing swing at this new space I’ve created for myself
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Do you have any tips or tried and tested techniques for getting past blank page syndrome?
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I usually have no trouble starting new things. The blank page is not a threat…
But then, I change my mind. Or it’s not good enough.
And I start on another blank page. Or a new website. Or a new journal altogether! And the rows of started but never finished pages pile up, taunting me
Julie, I seem to manage to do both
The alternative image I was going to use was of a stack of different journals and notebooks – probably best saved for another post on that topic though… I know exactly what you mean, and do just the same thing. What I’m learning to do is accept this is the way that I work, and learn, and create, letting things be, piles and all. After all, so long as they’re not taunting, the number of new journals unfinished doesn’t really matter, does it?
PS There’s some good material by Barbara Scher on scanners and the tying up of projects – have you come across her stuff? I have a book of hers which I’ve (scanner typically) started but not finished…
what fun – just make a mark! I find when I need to start writing and it need to find a push off, I start with the letter A and write every word I can think of that starts with that letter, then B, then C….and the longest I have ever made it was to L and then I realized I was writing whole sentences and off running with an idea.
just make a mark!
Patricia, I love the A-Z idea… I’m definitely going to try that one next time the blank page is daunting me