The Beauty of a Blank Page

A novel is an amazing thing, really. It's just a blank word document, a keyboard and your imagination. It's weird to think that if I just hit the keys in the right order long enough that I could end up with a best-selling novel.

So after all the preparation, it's a little bit of a nervous rush to actually start writing your first scene. Not only out of fear, as I've discussed, but also out of a sense of not wanting to blow it. As long as the page is blank, the possibilities are endless.

After I had finished my short story (or novella, Van!), I was over my fear. But I almost hated to mar the pristine blankness of that first page.  I didn't want to diminish the promise a blank page holds. It's like new fallen snow. It's most beautiful when it hasn't been touched.

I knew that once I got started that each word, paragraph and page I wrote would incrementally restrict the endless possibilities of the blank page.

But what finally got me started?

In the end, it was a deep desire to tell my story. I realized that the world and characters that I had come up with were as real to me as other familiar fictional settings such as Star Wars or the Marvel Universe.  Yet I was the only one who knew about it. That's when I knew I had to get this story out. I had to. It had become a need.

That's when I typed my first page.

It was during that same trip to Denver, I typed the first words in my first novel. On Tuesday, November 27th, I wrote the prologue and the beginning of the first chapter. I finished the first chapter on December 2nd. It was an interesting creative exercise to finish my prequel short story and then immediately turn right around and begin writing some of that same action...but from another character's point-of-view.

And I made some interesting discoveries in that first chapter.

Next: So much for sticking to the outline!