Thinking of it, you could probably remember being 7 or 8 years old the first time you felt that inexplicable, seizing emptiness, the vacuum brain.
When it happens to me, I like to say: "I'VE GOT THE HOMERS":
The pure, untouched snow-white page is attractive to our imagination but the options on how to fill it are so many that fear and panic can seize and stall our creativity.
Books and movies often show a lover trying to express his feelings on a letter, starting with "My dear Madeleine" and then throwing the paper in the basket, again and again.
Or a writer starting on a new project, holding his head in his hands.
How about a young copywriter, thinking of a new commercial, all night long?
No words seem good enough for the big task ahead. Anger rises and self-confidence decreases with each passing minute, coffee after coffee.
The SOLUTION? Start from something simple, a docile and not scary content.
START WRITING something, ANYTHING, as it comes, without worrying about the editing and the spelling.
There will be time for cutting, reviewing and shuffling your first draft later.
There can be no editing and proof reading without a first draft, right?
For a moment, put aside the structure and the programming and just let the words flow from the pen to the paper, let your fingers fly on the keyboard or, why not, tell your story out loud, in a voice recorder.
The ideas and dreams you had in the last few months and diligently scribbled on some forgotten post-it or phone note is a great start for your conscience flow.
If you are anything like me, you already have a file on your computer desktop containing some thirty beginnings, first pages that you jotted down sure to be about to create the next American Novel and then never read or continued again.
Time to dust some virtual spiderwebs... I'll follow my own advice right now.
