Blank Pages
My kids do this really annoying thing lately. The oldest started it (he turns six next month). They come in, yank open the printer next to my desk, pull out a single sheet of paper, slam it shut and leave. A few minutes later, sometimes thirty seconds, one of them will come back in and do it again. And again. And again.
I could just put a fresh stack of paper out in the front room somewhere. But then I don’t think a stack of anything can survive in the same room with my kids for more than about fifteen minutes.
I’ve tried to hand them scrap paper -- blank on one side -- but they won’t have it. I caused a full meltdown one morning when I told my two-year-old, essentially, it’s this or nothing. With weeping and wailing and a tear-streaked face, she chose nothing. The next day, with her brother’s help, she got what she wanted.
A clean, blank page.
She’s learning how it feels when different kinds of writing implements are dragged across a surface. She loves to see what kinds of lines they make.
Her brother loves to write letters to people, stringing together words that are only half-nonsense, and he loves to draw tigers that breathe lightning.
Neither of them would understand a favorite claim of both writers and artists, that there is nothing scarier than a blank page.
For them, it’s the opposite. They feel the crackling current of creativity course through their very bodies, and by some deep instinct hunger for the outlet of a raw canvas. They will cry hot tears in its absence.
Bad Art
Let me here hurry and say that my kids are anything but unique in this way. Their art isn’t good. It’s rough and silly and usually derivative. The only word my son can reliably spell is his own name, which is three letters, and phonetic.
But, just like other kids, they are too young to be ashamed of what they make. They haven’t learned how. They certainly will, but by God it better not be from me.
Which means I have to practice unlearning it, every day.
How?
I must face a new blank page, let go of my fear, and remember my hunger.
Buttons
Look at my cool button collection. If you click on one, you’ll get licked by a unicorn.
If I thought a unicorn would really lick me, the sky is the limit on what I'd pay.
I love this. I saw a quote today from Neil Gaiman with the same theme, "Nobody's ever going to see your first draft. That's the thing you might be agonising over, but whatever you're doing can be fixed. You can fix it tomorrow, you can fix it next week." And Jane Smiley said, "Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist."