Empty Pages

The tip of the glass pen poised above the empty page, the blue ink gathering at the tip waiting to seep into the parchment and transform from a blank page into a journey. Moments passed by, yet the pen did not move. The hesitation now marked in minutes instead of moments. Slowly she let out a long, almost tortured sigh, but did not put the pen down.

An empty page can be one of the most daunting things a writer can encounter, and she was a writer after all. At least that’s what told herself. A writer that could not seem to get the stories out of her head and onto paper. She had thousands... no, millions of ideas tucked away in her head desperately wanting to bleed out into a page just like the one sitting in front of her. And yet, there were more empty notebooks on her shelves than full ones.

It had become a compulsion over the years, the need to buy notebooks and journals. It started as a motivational tool, as she had hoped that housing the story within a journal worthy of the telling would be some sort of key to unlock her hesitation. Then her husband, seeing her love of journals, had started getting her a special notebook every year for her birthday, which delighted her to no end. She could never pass by a bookstore without picking up a new one to add to her bookshelf of unwritten adventures. And there it would stay, an almost story hidden within the blank pages, waiting to be revealed.

She would walk by the bookshelf every now and then and hear whispers of a story. She would pause and pull the book from its resting place and open the cover, thumbing through the pages as she imagined the adventures it would someday hold.

It seems like such a simple thing, an empty page. Yet, it is anything but. Just look at the space from edge to edge. I mean really look at it. Look at the space, the texture, the hue. Then use other senses and smell the pages, the binding, the cover; feel the texture of the paper, the softness of the cover, the embossed markings across the spine; hear the pages falling as you turn them and the spine cracking, giving way to the weight of the pages as you delve deeper into the story.

What is this space? What is this notebook meant to hold? Surely, she cannot carelessly pick up a journal with no plan or intentions and start writing?! There’s planning, plotting, and careful storylines to weave into its porous fibers. She had such an intense sense of responsibility to fill the pages with something meaningful, inspiring, and worthy that it often stopped her creating anything at all. The fear of not getting it right, not doing the story justice, had been enough to abate her efforts.

Even if she was lucky enough to know what stories and adventure should find their telling within these pages. What happens when she makes a mistake? It’s not like typing things out on a computer where she can write, delete, copy, paste and format. She must know what she is going to write, which becomes very problematic when the entire act of writing balances on the fact that writing is as much of a journey for her as it is for the potential reader.

It’s a rare thing to end up with exactly what she had intended to write. Writing was an act of discovery just as much as an act of creation and preservation, for often writers find themselves but a servant to the creative process. Make no mistake, there is magic in this process. So why did her pen falter every time? Why could she not bring herself to mar the empty page with ink and well-intentioned, eclectic, stories of other worlds and far away adventures?

The reasons, or excuses as most would call them, have varied over the years, but largely it always came back to lack of time and energy. She had no idea how difficult life as an adult would be. And in her depression, or perhaps her desperation, when the reality of the world would encroach into her safe haven of creativity, she would hear herself repeatedly say things like, “If I only had some time escape, then I could really concentrate on writing”. She just needed to figure out how to get started so that she can step away from the everyday and step into the reality she actually wanted: travel, write, and be a part of the world, not merely a spectator of it.

And so, it was one night, which was no more important than any other in her life, as she passed the bookshelf that held years of empty notebooks, she once again paused to pull one from the shelf and gaze at the empty pages. As the first page fell open, there, at the top of the empty page, was a stain made from a single ink droplet that was showing signs of age on the thick journal paper. The stray ink stain had been enough to make her close the cover years ago; a blemish on an otherwise perfect page.

As she ran a finger over the mark, a strange feeling started to pull at her. A sadness that she had never experienced before started to seep into the back of her mind and the thought flowed like a whisper:

What a sad thing this…. a book with no stories.

An ache slowly welled within her and a slow centering calm followed the wave of need that preceded it. And like a floodgate opening, the need to plan and be perfect was gone in that moment, washed away with the worrying ache that had overwhelmed her time and time again. An urgency sprung anew in the back of her mind and she moved to her writing room, her fingers latched tightly to the journal she had tucked away so many years ago.

And here she was again, hesitating; the glass tip of the pen suspended above the journal.

...waiting…

She closed her eyes and centered herself again, her hand tightening around the inked pen that hovered over the old ink stain at the top of the page. She took another deep breath and turned her face towards the page and paused. Her eyes slowly, yet determinedly, opened and she pushed the pen down and moved it across the aged paper, the ink flowing into the parchment-like life renewed, leaving wondrous patterns across the thirsty fibers.

And all of the years of everyday life suddenly felt like the experience and perspective that she needed to find her voice while the journals patiently waited for her to become… a writer, sure, but more than just writing, it was the act of storytelling, the weaving of lives, events, purpose, and knowledge, that had always called to her; that guided her to search within herself for her voice.

Her power.

She wrote for hours, writing down her thoughts, telling stories about her life and her world. Then she started telling stories of other worlds and others’ lives. The glass dip pen wet with ink obscured the words occasionally. Her handwriting jumped from cursive to print in the same word. There was no rhyme or reason to what she wrote. It was messy and frantic and inspired and chaotic.

And beautiful.

The journal ended up being the eclectic, hot mess it was always supposed to be. Its purpose had always been to be the beginning of a great adventure beyond the words held within its cover. Because this journal was where she found her voice. Unapologetic for the disarray that spilled across its pages, it held as much madness as magic, much like her spirit.

It was the journey.

Hours later, she finally laid the pen down, her hand numb from the effort of putting her thoughts to page. And that night, she slept better than she had in years, feeling more like herself than she had ever felt.

Months passed as she filled the bookshelf of empty pages with ideas and stories. And then, one day there came a knock at the door. She did not move from her spot in her writing room as she sat working on a story. She heard the door open and close, then her husband appeared in the doorway and stood silently by as she finished her last thought. She turned towards him and he handed her an envelope.

She froze when she saw the sender, her fingers refusing to move in a moment of apprehension. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she took a deep breath and willed her fingers to move again. She gripped the perforated tear strip and tore open the certified envelope. She paused momentarily again and then pulled out the stack of materials inside.

On top was a letter that she barely saw because her eyes were pulled to the magazine cover behind it, the bold font of “winner” bleeding through the letter on top of it. She pulled the magazine out from behind the letter. It was the proof for the next edition with her picture and name on the cover and a check for $20,000 clipped to the cover.

Published!

“So....what’s next?” he asked, a smile spreading across his face, beaming with pride.

She gazed at the check and then at the letter, the words were jumbled as unshed tears flooded her vision. She took a deep breath and then her eyes snapped back to the computer, the cursor flashing where she had ended her thought. An inkling of an idea started to pull at her, like the night she had written in the first journal, and a smile pulled at the edges of her mouth.

She spun around and stared at the bookshelf, now with more filled journals than empty, and the familiar wave of inspiration washed over her again. She stood, kissing him in excited glee, and then moved to the bookshelf and pulled an empty notebook from its long resting place.

“I’ve been trying to describe this mountain range,” she whispered, “but I can’t seem to quite capture it in words.” She turned around, a little, black journal tucked in her arms and a wistful smile on her face, “let’s go find it.”