The Horror of the Blank Page
Throughout the entirety of the craft, across all nations, without cultural barriers, it is perhaps the one universal constant. It knows no race, no nation, no border, and no social class. It is the dark specter that haunts all authors, both aspiring and veteran, because it knows neither the limits of time nor age. I am talking about the nothingness, the void. The blank, empty page—the one rectangle that anyone has to face if they want to write anything. Be it a screen or pen and paper, it remains.
As a consumer of the craft first and a writer second—though since a young age, I was told I would be a writer, which begs the question of predetermined fate—I have come across many existential works that cause terror. From foundational works such as “The King in Yellow” by the American Author Chambers to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, to more recent creators such as the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt that deal not in fiction but in the creative presentation of advanced science—only to end up as a crash course in fear presentation. All of them have in common, with the clever and proper implementation of the tools of the craft, they manage to, among other things, give the audience, the reader existential terror.
Terror, so different from Horror. Horror is temporary; it is the intrusion of some impermanent elements into the life of the reader. It will eventually fade away. Sure, it can be remembered fondly, but it will lose its power over those who enjoy it. It is the tiny tyrant of fear in the mind, nothing but a tiny thing casting a large shadow. Terror, on the other hand, lingers; it lives and breathes. It is something that preys on our capacity for awareness, on our capability as a conscious-sapient being to see the universe and try to understand it. It is alive because it represents darkness so far beyond our reach that the millennia-old fear of “not being alone” kicks in. It goes deeper than a mere monster; it is larger and far more terrible because it uses the one certainty that all humans think they have—the one concrete thing that our minds believe in—our own existence. Terror breaks into it and uses it to take away the illusion of a solid floor beneath us.
It goes beyond the illusion of monsters in the dark; it surpasses because it is not the monsters themselves but the darkness. A monster, no matter how menacing and large, is a singular thing—something that, in theory, you can pick up your spears and hunt. But something larger than that? That shakes everything we know to our core, and it can break us.
So it is with the blank page, the little blinking thingy that represents where the words will be written once you start typing. But you don’t. Something inside you is preventing you from writing. Maybe the muse is ignoring you today, perhaps the Imp has decided to be mean—maybe, maybe. But you have to write; you have a deadline to meet, objectives to complete. You have to write, but there you are, sitting, looking at a blank page that is nothing because it has nothing on it. And all the while, that darn thing is blinking away—on and off, on and off, tick, tock, tick, tock. Time scurrying away. Day, night, indifferent to what you have to do—the world uncaring, as the very tool that you are using is telling you that the precious element that is time is flowing away, with you unable to do anything about it.
Still, you have to write, so you launch into freewriting, hoping, praying that you can kickstart your work like that. You manage a few lines, but then you stop. There is something on the page now, and that gives you brief relief, but it is fleeting—a momentary lie you tell yourself not to succumb to the nothing on the page. Why? Because those words mean nothing; they are but a tiny, momentary anchor that will not stay because over the page, nothing is permanent but the void.
This is just you—no one else with you—alone, you and the void, and the tick, tock, tick tock. Time flows, your strength fails, determination falters as this realization sinks in, and then you succumb to it, abandoning yourself to the void. For anyone who sits to write, this is the one great obstacle they will face, the one great roadblock, defeating the nothing to create something because it can stop it with its Terror before you even begin. Especially because it is the one thing that you will face every single time, no exception, no shortcuts—just reality, indifferent to our designs, wishes, and ambitions. It is compounded by the fact that it is unbeatable; you can’t defeat nothing; you can only delay it, create something to keep it at bay, or write in the hopes that it will be enough.
And that is the one great thing that many aspire to, especially at the beginning—that it, they, will be enough. Only to, in their eyes, end up short and surrender to fear, to Terror.
Until next time.
