The Blank Page

Less than a month left of my summer holidays and I've been thinking about the blank page . . .

I don't fear it, I fill it with nonsense mostly. Words I collect as I walk and scroll through my day: heavy-hitter verbs, pretty images, notes to myself of where I am and what I need to focus on. 

I write in cafes, on buses, on my couch, sometimes in my phone but mostly on my laptop or notebook. I have files on both the computer and phone that I add notes to, so I don't lose them while doing other things. I've even tried voice notes on my phone when I'm driving alone, but I don't like that medium as well. 

I borrow words or phrases from articles I'm reading, what's going on out the window, the things my kids say:

The ice cream I ate drunk in the rain, being woken by ravens, solstice, imprecision, fears that I'm stuck, losing time, erasure, the poem locked in my brain, a firm handshake, ripe to rotten, runes of birch, flirt in the corner, inherit. 

When nothing clicks I wander again through the pages to find phrases that spark. I restitch them, take the out-of-context further removed. Find connections between my days, the words that caught my eyes. Someday all I do is note and reorganise, but nothing comes together. The next day I start again. 

It's reassuringly simple, no expectation to write a poem or say anything coherent. I can just write and when something starts to gel I'm able to work with it because I'm present, I'm already there at the page. 

I've taken a week to write this post, wandered away for a while. Of the lines I lifted from my notebook above flirt in the corner has become part of a poem. As soon as I wrote it here I saw its potential, the direction is was leaning towards and I followed it. The rest have moved about or become compost on the page, layers that might eventually produce something useful. 

In that week I've written a little every day, maybe a page or just half a dozen lines, but I've only written one poem. And that feels about right. My inspiration of earlier in the year is fading, still there, but it feels gone over too often, I'm too aware of its curves, its voice. I still find comfort in it, but it isn't bursting over me with feelings and ideas, phrases that speak for me. So slowing down with my writing and changing focus is to be expected. 

As the summer break winds down, I'm trying to make the most of the quiet days so I don't feel like I've wasted the writing time I've been gifted. I'm enjoying my play with small details even if I have little to show for it.

Take care.