Whiteness
The blue screen of death that is so identifying of Windows is one universally known. When you see it, you know your computer is fucked. Odds are, you’ll call more than a few people before you’re able to avoid getting that blue hammer slammed down on you long enough to fix the problem. The good part about it though, is that when encountered, it can be solved. The Mac users have their own variation called the pinwheel of death that I have experienced for over twenty hours in an editing booth. Unlike the blue screen of death, you actually think that if you let it go long enough it will finish what you started by clicking that damned “Print to video” option. It never finishes though, and you’re stuck starting up the ole beast again.
The blank screen of death is worse. It’s what I call the blank, white, empty screen that automatically pops up when you load Word. Or Sophocles. Or Movie Magic Screenwriter. Or Word Perfect. It’s a punch to the stomach of creativity. If you don’t plow through that first page, the expansive white that seems to grow in spite of every key stroke saps every ounce of inspiration you carry into the project. There it sits, below your flickering cursor. Ever present; never decreasing. No matter how much you write, it’s always there.
It exists between the letters. Inside the loops of o’s and the domes of e’s. It’s above your sentences, below them, in the margins. It surrounds your work. Choking the life out of it. It seems that despite everything you do, it is out to stop you from finishing what you started. It seems to make your fingers heavy. The lifting and pounding of the fingers starts to become a task comparable to breaking the Gordian Knot. The only way you can is to hack your way through with darting clacks of digits hitting keys.
Fighting through the white with the Automatic black of your Times New Roman twelve point font is just as difficult, and often more so, as slashing through the hanging vines in a South American jungle. Looking for the completion of the story is really just the path you take to destroy the negative space that the screen keeps throwing up at you. It’s almost as if the program is designed to block you from you mission by putting that empty space up like a poor man’s roadblock. The only way to get through is to pound your way.
Every time you get through though there are more car on fire, blocking the road. You can see the end. It draws nearer with every keystroke. You’ve already written it in your head, but you can’t bring yourself to put it to paper without the rational for it. That rational is the struggle in place between the letters and the space. The story sometimes because secondary to finishing the project. Sometimes, you just start writing anything to get to where you want to go. It may make as much sense as something really nonsensical, but it puts enough black on the page to justify the insertion of the ending.
The expansive whiteness never leaves you. It is omnipresent. It follows you as you type. It reminds you of its presence as you erase it with your serifs and punctuation. The bitch about it though, is that when you finally get to the bottom of the page and think you’re done, your last word is just long enough to require a new line. That one lonely letter pushes your paragraph into the next page and boom! An entire page of white staring you down again. Your pride takes over and the cycle starts again.
Looking at the blank screen of death is worse than anything to me. I can deal with the constant crashing of my computer. I can even deal with the freezing problem. What I can’t deal with though, is rushing home to start writing something, turning on the computer and then staring at the blank page, filled with white that awaits my words. It sits there, blank as a poker face, daring me to start. It calls me every time and frequently I fold. Sometimes I fight through the bluff and keep going, but in the end I resign my king and close the program. There are times where that white screen is just a banner at a high school football game, easily torn through with the slightest pressure. The other times however, the blank screen of death stares me down as if challenging me to conquer it. Unlike the blue screen or the pinwheel, there is no solution outside of my own mind.
So I say to you, fellow writers, let me be your muse. Let me solve your writer’s block. Let me cash your royalty checks.
The blank screen of death is worse. It’s what I call the blank, white, empty screen that automatically pops up when you load Word. Or Sophocles. Or Movie Magic Screenwriter. Or Word Perfect. It’s a punch to the stomach of creativity. If you don’t plow through that first page, the expansive white that seems to grow in spite of every key stroke saps every ounce of inspiration you carry into the project. There it sits, below your flickering cursor. Ever present; never decreasing. No matter how much you write, it’s always there.
It exists between the letters. Inside the loops of o’s and the domes of e’s. It’s above your sentences, below them, in the margins. It surrounds your work. Choking the life out of it. It seems that despite everything you do, it is out to stop you from finishing what you started. It seems to make your fingers heavy. The lifting and pounding of the fingers starts to become a task comparable to breaking the Gordian Knot. The only way you can is to hack your way through with darting clacks of digits hitting keys.
Fighting through the white with the Automatic black of your Times New Roman twelve point font is just as difficult, and often more so, as slashing through the hanging vines in a South American jungle. Looking for the completion of the story is really just the path you take to destroy the negative space that the screen keeps throwing up at you. It’s almost as if the program is designed to block you from you mission by putting that empty space up like a poor man’s roadblock. The only way to get through is to pound your way.
Every time you get through though there are more car on fire, blocking the road. You can see the end. It draws nearer with every keystroke. You’ve already written it in your head, but you can’t bring yourself to put it to paper without the rational for it. That rational is the struggle in place between the letters and the space. The story sometimes because secondary to finishing the project. Sometimes, you just start writing anything to get to where you want to go. It may make as much sense as something really nonsensical, but it puts enough black on the page to justify the insertion of the ending.
The expansive whiteness never leaves you. It is omnipresent. It follows you as you type. It reminds you of its presence as you erase it with your serifs and punctuation. The bitch about it though, is that when you finally get to the bottom of the page and think you’re done, your last word is just long enough to require a new line. That one lonely letter pushes your paragraph into the next page and boom! An entire page of white staring you down again. Your pride takes over and the cycle starts again.
Looking at the blank screen of death is worse than anything to me. I can deal with the constant crashing of my computer. I can even deal with the freezing problem. What I can’t deal with though, is rushing home to start writing something, turning on the computer and then staring at the blank page, filled with white that awaits my words. It sits there, blank as a poker face, daring me to start. It calls me every time and frequently I fold. Sometimes I fight through the bluff and keep going, but in the end I resign my king and close the program. There are times where that white screen is just a banner at a high school football game, easily torn through with the slightest pressure. The other times however, the blank screen of death stares me down as if challenging me to conquer it. Unlike the blue screen or the pinwheel, there is no solution outside of my own mind.
So I say to you, fellow writers, let me be your muse. Let me solve your writer’s block. Let me cash your royalty checks.
We are all so very sorry...
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