Bring a Full Mind to the Empty Page

How to Prime Your Writing Pump

You sit down to write, but can’t come up with anything good enough to besmirch the pristine whiteness of the blank page.

Perhaps you know what you want to write about. Even so, your inner critic bashes everything you propose. For every keystroke you make, there’s a backspace.

Once this encounter with the empty page happens a few times, limiting thoughts barge in. You’ve got writer’s block. Maybe you’re not cut out to do this. You’ve got nothing to write, so why torture yourself?

This may have nothing to do with your being a writer, and everything to do with what’s in your “writing tank.”

It’s not the empty page we’re afraid of—it’s the empty mind.

Where the words come from

Before words appear on paper, the ideas form in your head. (Sometimes those ideas don’t clarify until you put them into the words. For me, writing is a physical manifestation of deep thought.)

When writing is fun and fulfilling, the words emerge from different areas of our minds as images, emotions, and…