You Can’t Edit a Blank Page

When I published my first novel, “Empire of the Void,” and started my first round of author events, one of the most common comments I received was “Oh yeah I’m working on a book too!”

That’s great, when’s your author event? 

First, if you’re attending an author event or a book signing, it’s about the book being presented. I’m more than happy to talk about your writing afterward. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

But more importantly, the line that always follows that statement is, “I’m planning this…” or “I’ve been thinking a lot about…” That isn’t the right answer either.

Writing a novel, hell, even a poem, can be a very daunting thing. You’re trying to craft something that will resonate with people on an emotional level, no easy task. People spend years and thousands of dollars for their book to be seen only for it to end up as a book-of-the-month, something that will be read once and shrugged off. 

That thought alone can turn so many people away from pursuing something they’ve been passionate about their whole life. Writing a novel is a terrifying journey. 

But like all great journeys, it means nothing if you don’t take the first step.

After the first few thousand words of “Empire,” I put it on the back burner. I was content with the prologue and the first chapter, I had an idea of what the story was going to be, but I hadn’t yet discovered how it would all unravel. I didn’t know the characters yet, or what I was trying to say with it.

I thought the best course of action would be to put the project to the side and move on to the next idea I had. I hadn’t yet realized then that was what I always did when I hit a roadblock with my writing. 

So my mentor told me, “You can’t edit a blank page.”

Relatively speaking, it didn’t take me long to finish my first novel after that. 

The mentality is simple. Your first draft will never be perfect, and that’s okay. But as long as your have something written down, you can workshop it.

Let’s take your protagonist. You know the story is “A guy is betrayed by his best friend and they have to duke it out.” First big question, what led to the betrayal? You don’t know what the answer is yet, so put in a filler and get the ball rolling: “Protagonist wasn’t there when his friend needed him most.”

Great! You’ve got the start of both the plot and a character arc. Now you have two roads to take. You can look at that and say, “No that’s dumb, I need something with more weight,” or run with it and develop that story more. At the very least, you have solid ground to stand on.

My first draft is usually just an outline. I know what plot points A and Z are, now I have to fill them in, and I like to break it into chunks. I’ll do maybe three to five plot bullets for what the opening is. I’ll throw a little plot bullet in the middle if I know for certain a scene I want to have. 

Even when I have a full outline and am satisfied with the direction of the story, I know I will not be sticking to it to the T.

Usually, I’m just changing details here or there to focus more on the soul of the story, or if I think I can better develop a character. Maybe I realized a major plot twist didn’t have a proper set-up. Or better yet, and I love it when this happens, the solution to an obstacle is something I didn’t even realize I had set up in the beginning.

Do you have writer’s block because you wrote yourself into a corner without a way for your heroes to get out alive? Fantastic, you can edit that. Backtrack. Maybe it was a dumb decision by an otherwise smart character that got them there to begin with, and changing that detail not only fixes your writer's block but gives them a chance to show off their intellectual strengths. Or, write a cheap way for them to get out with the knowledge that you won’t keep it in the final draft. 

Push through it to keep those creative juices flowing. Double back to that scene that gave you a hard time later. By the time you do, you might even have gotten a deeper understanding of the characters and world you created, and with that, the right solution comes easily to your head. Now you can re-work that scene to be thematically stronger, more interesting, and believable.

There isn’t a single great book that was published as a first draft. An early title of “Lord of the Rings” was simply “The Magic Ring.” One of the working titles for “Star Wars” was “The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as Taken from the ‘Journal of the Whills.’” 

What a mouthful. But they were starting points. 

Write a bad first draft. Write a terrible first draft. It doesn't matter. At least you’re writing.

And once you’ve put pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard, you can edit it. And please, do edit it.