Photo by Robbie Noble on Unsplash

Member-only story

Putting Words on the Page

Drivel is better than the blank page. Adjust your thinking and get back to work.

Emily Owens
3 min readOct 15, 2021

--

You’ve probably heard the quotation oft ascribed to Hemingway:

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

And if you’ve done any creative writing, chances are you’ve probably waxed poetic about a blank page before. (Guilty 👋) These are valid responses, of course. Even seasoned authors suffer a block occasionally, no matter how much they love writing. Sometimes writing just is hard.

What really matters is how you respond to the block. (And laughing at the thing about bleeding doesn’t count.)

Don’t give in to the waiting game

If you’re waiting for your writing project to emerge pristine and fully formed like Athena gamboling down from Zeus’ glorious forehead, you’re going to be waiting for a long time.

A lot of writers may conflate the quality of a piece with their abilities as a writer, but this just isn’t the case. You’re not a bad writer because you wrote something badly. You know who has written a shitty draft before? Probably every writer you’ve ever read!

--

--

White Deer Publishing
White Deer Publishing

Published in White Deer Publishing

White Deer Publishing is an indie book publishing company. We’re proudly women-owned and based in East Atlanta Village in Atlanta, Georgia. Our imprints currently include How2Conquer and d’Aulnoy Editions.

Emily Owens
Emily Owens

Written by Emily Owens

Managing Editor of d'Aulnoy Editions | Writer | Potato Enthusiast www.linkedin.com/in/emilyowens13

No responses yet