The Blank Page

Every thing that gets written starts with what can only be described as the blank page. Sure, there might be a template or a pattern to fill in, but it's still ultimately blank. My amazement lives in the idea that there are people out there who can fill blank pages so well, people who can construct plays and novels that seem to effortlessly entertain and divert and illuminate. I wish I could do the same, but I know that I write experiments and exercises more than triumphs. They are far more valuable personally than aesthetically or creatively, but they are still valuable, and the Quirky Muffins lives on in its state of permanent disarray.

Some people can fill the pages magnificently. Steven Moffat, for example, just landed a wonderful fiftieth anniversary episode of 'Doctor Who' squarely in the park and made it look easy. I'm sure it was utterly blindingly difficult, as were his two episodes of 'Sherlock' so far and all the great 'Press Gang' and 'Doctor Who' and 'Coupling' shows he wrote. The man is a wizard. Long live the Great Moff. He's a man who got to write two of his favourite characters in the history of literature, and they're both icons to boot. He's also a man who gets ridiculous amounts of petty criticism from the audience portion of the media-sphere, and keeps on going despite it. In the short term, the Internet has all the critical value of a drunken mob of yobs dissatisfied that their free lump of gold has a picture of a yak instead of a mango engraved upon it. Long term reaction is all that reflects accurately.

For sheer diversity not many people leap into the mind as quickly as the Moff. Perhaps another example is the bearded wonder Terry Pratchett, who wrote in so many genres and tones in the grand era of his Discworld novels that he could well be one of the most magnificently skilled authors ever to wield a pen, and yet they're all fantasy so no one will ever really take him seriously. It's bizarre how that works. Long time correction will win out again, just more subtly.

Perhaps the blank page is really an invitation instead of a challenge. Perhaps my research would fare better if it began on a blank page again, a new invitation to investigation. It is so frustrating to be blocked by what seems to be a minor problem. Every system of differential equations has to be completed by boundary or initial conditions so that we can work out specific solutions instead of general ones, so why can't we concoct a compatible set of conditions for our problem? Obviously there's a fundamental lack of understanding going on somewhere. There's a blank page unfilled, an improvidence deep in the works only now wreaking havoc, and general rethinking and restart is in order. Yet, we are so incredibly close as it stands...

On good days, especially on real paper, the blank page is a fantastic thing to have in front of you. You can do amazing things with a piece of paper, a pen, and no computer or Internet to distract. Long bus journeys back and forth to Aberystwyth have yielded lovely long letters as well as bizarre odes to joy and some of these posts. What more can come of the blank pages to come? And what of your own blanks?

O.