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Thoughts on the Blank Page             

A blank page. Unspoken. Undeclared.  Does it excite or intimidate?  

Even better a journal—and the fullness there in--a book of stark, flipped through, snapped and crisp paper. A promise of a future together. Time spent with ink and thoughts.

It is the marking, the marring of these pages that interests me. Your smoothness and promise can only hold my attention for so long. To keep me you must eventually speak. I do not mind false starts and mistakes. Run on sentences in too big of a hurry to slow down for proper etiquette, like a child telling a story in gasping breaths.

It is the dark on the light, the ink on the white, that intrigues me, keeps me turning, dog-eared, underlined, notes to myself to remember, to forget and find again.

We ourselves start as a blank parchment, although tightly bound in a book full of pages of history.  We have read those pages to understand ourselves and decided how much or how little those words will affect our own words. As a writer I must choose how much of my history I will draw on to write a piece, how much of the things that happened to me or around me will shade this topic, this character? At times I need to shut off those influences and pull from something that is wholly mine and at others I need those parts that were sewn into me like quilting patches, some soft and subdued and other violent with color making me a baffling whole that plays again itself like cherry red and ballet pink. I’m both hard and soft, sweet and tangy, all with the ability to complement or contrast depending how they are presented.     

Filling this blank page is how I tell you about me. This is after all how we get to know people, we talk over coffee, starting with the here and now. This is my work, this is my family, this what I do with my time. Its only later when there is some trust that our history comes to the surface. Here is what happened when my family splintered, when college made me feel more blurry than defined, when I learned how to be a good friend--these things shape how we approach life. We start to see the twists and turns of each other, why she never drinks or why holidays are hard. The pains that make us guarded, so when we are in a group and someone says something that bounces off everyone else that person looks at you because they know the casual comment cut. We interwind out stories, we write side by side, we share, we critique.

I wanted to create a space to share our work. An unbound journal if you will. Where you can tear pages out and lay them on the table for others to see. I hope we will inspire each other with our vulnerability, with our humor and unique perspective. Essays, journal entries, poetry, articles, words in any shape. A draft or a carefully polished piece anything you feel ready to share.

If you followed a draft prompt tell us which one …