The Blank Page

I got up early this morning to write something for this publication. It’d been a week since I’d written anything, so I thought I might have something interesting to say.

But nothing came.

After the Christmas festivities, I felt primed and ready to go. But as eight o’clock rolled on towards nine o’clock, and nine o’clock nudged ten, I was still staring at a blank page. My mind felt empty as though my brain had been scooped out overnight and filled with soot. I wasn’t tired or hungover or ill; in fact, I’d been running that morning, and was fresh and fit. And yet I was totally devoid of even the simplest idea.

I stared at the screen for ages. Then out of the window at the dirty sky wondering if it was going to rain again. Then back at the screen. Then back outside again. Was this writer’s block? That mystical thing I hear other people talk about.

I looked at the screen again. Surely not. I’ve always got something to say, something to write about, even if it’s just nonsense. But today I was truly stuck, as though my hands were made of jelly fingers, unable to press a single key, incapable of typing a single word.

I briefly thought about writing about my summer holidays like I used to do at school. But as I didn’t have a holiday this year, or the year before, there wasn’t much to say. I could write about life on a rural…