Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, is also a prolific author. In a recent interview, he was asked his secret to writing so much. His response? “You can’t edit a blank page.” If he had a project, but he didn’t have any words, there was nothing much he could do. But as soon as he got some words down, then he could edit them. So, best to put some words on the page.
It sounds simple and logical, which is why similar phrases have been attributed to other authors (like the prolific Jodi Picoult) too. You can turn something into something better, but turning nothing into something is a different matter. Best to get past the nothing stage as soon as possible so you can get on to the work of making something people will want to read.
Now there are a few tricks to help you get past the blank page stage.
The first is to lower your standards. First drafts are almost always terrible. So what? Carry on and go ahead and write something bad.
Another option for getting past the blank page stage is to realize that you don’t have to start at the beginning. Start anywhere you have something to say, and then build around there. Even a single statistic, or quote, can be a catalyst for everything else.
A third option is to plan to visit your work multiple times. Let’s hope you don’t need to immediately publish whatever you crank out in the next 10 minutes. If you plan for multiple sessions, that will lower the pressure for each time you touch the work. This might mean jotting down notes in one sitting, writing in another sitting, and editing in a third. It might mean getting down ideas for a presentation in one sitting, creating the titles for slides in the next, completing the slides in the next sitting, and planning your talking points in the final one.
Once you get past the blank page stage, you have something to edit. Now you can make progress turning what you’ve got into what you’d like it to be. But until you get to that stage, no real progress can happen. So best not to sit on nothing for too long.
I’m trying to write a grant and this is exactly how I brought myself to do it. Put something down there!
Write one true sentence—Ernest Hemingway.