How to Avoid Blank Page Syndrome: The Jar Method

When I’m editing, there are specific problems to tackle, and I find I have a clear to-do list. Even if there’s a lot to do, I have a road map, but at the beginning of a project, I get so easily daunted by the blank page. I have all these ideas, and can see where the work wants to go, but I have no entry point into the world. It feels like I’m standing at the bottom of a mountain and I have no idea how to start climbing. 

A few years ago, when I was starting my forthcoming novel, The Fun Times Brigade, I knew I wanted to write a novel about grief, and friendship, and a touring kids’ musician, and the bewildering early days of new motherhood. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle all of that. I also had two very young children, and the only time I could write was during twenty-minute windows in the early mornings before my kids woke up and my writing brain was co-opted with requests for toast, no cereal, no waffles.

Cue, the Jar Method (patent pending!). I wrote ideas—both big picture, and scene ideas—onto small slips of paper and put them in a Mason jar. 

Some were specific—going on tour bus for the first time, argument with husband, festival performance, recording studio scene, coming up with a band name, breastfeeding, pi Day, singing Baby Beluga. Some were less specific—birth, cancer, pregnancy.

And every morning I would wake up in the dark, set my timer for twenty minutes, and pull a prompt out of the jar.

I couldn’t overthink a scene, or hmm and haw over what to write about, or wonder if what I was writing was good or not. I had to get out of my own way and write. Besides, the timer was ticking. Though I generally hate being told what to do, I love having a task, and felt accomplished every time my timer would go off.

Sometimes I wouldn’t be done at the twenty-minute mark, and when I could, I’d continue. Sometimes I would be done long before the timer went off. I made a rule for myself to keep writing, to push through the “I’m done” feeling eight minutes in, and even though not everything made the cut, investing in an idea or a scene for twenty minute is a good exercise for me in not just accepting the very first things that appears on the page. 

An almost-novel

Eventually, I ran out of slips of paper in the jar, and had a folder full of documents. I grouped them into chronological sub-folders, and found a starting point. From there, I began to layer and stack up the scenes one after another, letting the narrative emerge from these already-written documents.  

It wasn’t a full novel, but after a few months of “jar writing”, and another months of finding an order for the documents, I had the broad strokes of the book (a book I can actually hold in my hands now!) 

The Jar Method: For editing and re-writing too

I’m in the middle of a big rewrite of a new project, and was feeling particularly daunted after getting notes on the work. I knew what needed to change, but I had the same standing-at-the-bottom-of-a-mountain feeling I had when I started The Fun Times Brigade. I had no idea how I was going to get back inside the book, until I remembered the Jar Method! 

I wrote a list of all of the missing holes and underdeveloped scenes and characters, and put each one on a slip of paper, and filled my trusty Mason jar. 

The jar is almost empty now, and my next steps are sifting through all of the documents. I love knowing that I have (most of) the missing bricks written, and waiting for me in a folder called “Jar”.