When writing papers in my freshman year of college, I was without a plan of attack. As a result, my papers often resembled all the organization of the random stream of consciousness that flowed directly from my mind. That was on a good day when I was writing on an easy, well-defined topic.
My worst fear in class was to hear the words, “You may write on anything you wish–on whatever topic you choose.” Could he be more ambiguous? The only thing worse than those words was to hear the professor add, “The paper may be of any length.” Talk about an ill-defined problem! Where do you even start?
Whether wittingly or unwittingly, the professor had just forced me to face something I greatly feared: the blank page. I could totally relate to the deer staring into the headlights of an oncoming vehicle–his mind locked up like a frozen program on a computer. Like that deer, I would pull out a blank page of paper and then give it my own blank stare with the same frozen state of mind. I would rather face a final exam on deterministic stochastic paradoxical processes than face that blank page.
Enough about the experiences that make me the traumatized person I am today! The question is, how do you conquer the blank page or at least become somewhat cordial with it? The answer is that you approach a blank page in the same way you would approach any ill-defined problem. You use questions! Questions help unlock your brain and get it working again.
Start with something simple, like what is my topic? Write down several suggestions. Under each suggestion, try asking follow-on questions and answers to see how each topic fleshes out. Once you have a few questions and answers written down under several of the topics, choose the topic that interests you the most or has the most potential to give you a solid amount of writing.
That’s it. That’s the trick to conquering the blank page. If you need detailed steps on how to accomplish this, please check out my online class and please remember to Like us on Facebook.
© M. D. McKinley, PHD 2016