The challenge continues.....

So perhaps this is the challenge of the blank page. To say something useful, interesting, challenging or just entertaining in order to fill up the white space with black words. Black on white. A most beautiful sight, a glorious vista of everyday creativity. A testament to human imagination and ingenuity. A small contribution to an ocean of mind-based activity. A hope for the artistic endeavours past, present and future. Sentence building, paragraph construction and page making, word by word, brick by brick. The edifice arises...

The challenge of the blank page - throwing words at the screen

What makes us sit down and try and throw words at the screen in whatever form comes to mind whether essay, short story, poem, novel, play, screenplay, adaptation…what is the writer’s compulsion? Is it fame, glory, money (a la Dr Johnson?), posterity, the regard (even respect) of one’s peers? Today it is easier to gain access to the world of what used to be called the ‘belles lettres’ now renamed ‘arts and media’ (or meedja) as the late British politician Tony Benn lately dubbed it, but harder than it ever has been to make a living of some kind. More people are banging away at keyboards (silently), tossing paint at easels, producing podcasts, weaving tapestries, taking photographs, telling stories in one way or another but to what effect? The age of the internet has ‘connected’ us all up but taken away the means by which ‘artists’ earn a living? With more people ‘at it’ has the quality gone up? Are we more enlightened? As there is more of everything so there is more of the good but also is it not the case there is also much more of the bad? Never mind the quality look at the quantity! Or should the maxim less is more be the guide? In which case how does the current maker of these sentences think his contribution to the sum of human understanding is to be advanced by adding his pennorthworth? The great writer-producer John Lloyd maintains that everyone has talent of some kind but success (in any and many fields) comes with the desire to do very good work and the persistence to do it well along with effort, luck and all the other mysterious things. So, no challenge there then? It is called the challenge of the blank page…