Creativity Unleashed (I): The Blank Page

Welcome to the first part of this Creative Exploration!

It always brings me joy to let my creative energy out into the world, and I was really excited when the idea of the Creativity Unleashed essay series appeared to me. I hope you’re going to love these articles, too. Let’s begin:

The Blank Page Is The Starting Point

The Blank Page is the Starting Point for every Artist, regardless of the preferred medium of expression. All works of Art are first conceived in the Artist’s psyche, before he jumps into the creative unknown to bring them in the outer world.

Facing The Blank Page corresponds to the first phase of The Creative Process. As I wrote in my article The Creative Process: Inception and Incubation, this phase involves thoughts and visions about what to bring forth into existence. A flash of inspiration appearing into the Artist’s spirit and psyche, be it visual, auditory, tactile or involving all the senses.

As long as the page remains untouched, the possibilities are endless. We are looking into infinity, pondering unlimited permutations of Creation. This is why The Blank Page can be so intimidating.

Why It Is Intimidating

It can be daunting to face The Blank Page, especially when we first start out on our creative journey. It can bring up all our insecurities, and Resistance will definitely be there voicing our fear.

As Steven Pressfield says, Resistance is insidious:

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you.

The Blank Page is intimidating as long as we are not aware of our internal battle with Resistance. As long as Resistance wins over us, The Blank Page will frighten us and we will keep away from gifting our creations to the world.

Learn To Befriend The Blank Page

The only way to move past our Resistance and embrace this phase is to learn to befriend The Blank Page and love the process. This is a practice. It becomes easier and easier the more we do it. The same way we train our muscles when we exercise, and we become more physically apt to perform certain moves, we become more apt to face the yet untouched page and create when we practise.

Our Resistance, our fears and our insecurities will probably still be there while we do our work. Yet befriending and loving the process can bring us so many internal rewards, and hopefully also external ones.

This being said, I hope that this first part of Creativity Unleashed has brought you new insights and it has helped you in your creative journey! I’m looking forward to hearing from you about how you feel about The Blank Page. You can always let me know in the comments below.

With Love,