The Blank Page

I'm always amazed how that frightful feeling of "no words" and "nothing to write" dissolves when we keep moving pen on paper, refusing to give up. Here's a color-rich piece by new Wildfire Writer, Arvy:

No words come, no ideas emerge. Maybe crayons should take the place of pen. Doodling makes sense - I haven't doodled in years. Or maybe I should paint, but if there aren't words, will there be pictures? Would pictures bring about words? Or would colors, primary reds, yellows, oranges, bring about bright thoughts, sunshine, red geraniums. Maybe if I painted with pastels, blues, greens and pinks, I would think blushing thoughts and romantic words would surface. Would black, brown and gray bring melancholy? What if I painted a small section on a page with a single color and wrote from there? Anything would be better than this staring at a blank page, waiting.

I could use objects. If I pasted a cracker on a page would I write about soup? Green grass could evoke summer. Would a flower take me to spring? A bare branch brings winter. How about a leaf to herald the haze of autumn? A band aid to set off memories of pain. Lipstick leading to a remembered summer kiss. A piece of toweling could transport me to a lazy summer landscape. A nickel could evoke a childhood candy bar. Paste a grain of sand on paper and I could write about sea. A bottle cap could whisk me to a party or back to a hot summer day when a cold Coke floated in a pop machine.

A newspaper clipping could evoke history, a man on the moon, the day JFK died. A swatch of material could bring about my mother sewing. A piece of telephone wire would take me to my father. An obit would carry me to a lost love, or spark a story of an interesting person I wish I'd known.

As it is, I sit here with a pen and blank page. But wait. This page is not blank any longer.