Hello!
Howdy!
Man, openings are hard…
*Ahem*
Welcome to (what I’ve called) No Empty Pages!
In this essay, I will persuade you to keep reading! My IB Exam scores depend on it. Just kidding, luckily those days are behind me.
Thanks for making it this far – can you tell I’m nervous? But seriously. Welcome, welcome! Make yourself comfy and I’ll get some snacks.
No Empty Pages was born during a recent brainstorming session I had with myself (and lovely encouragement from a very dear friend). To be honest, it didn’t fully take form until I had to write my Substack bio, but as soon as I got the idea it stuck.
Writing is something I’ve done since middle school and I am always drawn to it. I was smitten with my creative writing courses in college. So many prompts inspired me and I was able to workshop ideas and drafts with others as passionate as I am. I graduated two years ago now and that’s no longer a resource. The internet, however, is ever-present. There are a multitude of writing prompts and idea generators, but I have never felt compelled to queue them up. It somehow didn’t feel right.
I started writing poems at the beginning of the year, and it felt like I was striking flint and steel. Ideas sparked and ignited back to back. They were feverishly put into a Google document and my collection grew. Luckily, when I return to ideas on my phone, they’re in clean, digital letters instead of frantic handwriting on various scraps of paper shoved into my pocket.
Most of my poetry pulls from personal experiences and focuses on raw emotions. These poems from the past few months have been a wonderful release of grief and love. Once a poem is done, it feels like a perfect bundle of goosebumps and being understood. I want to help people to feel goosebumps and understood too.
No Empty Pages is an attempt to push myself to write more and explore new ideas. This is also a space where I want to share some pre-existing/personal work too!
So far, I’ve come up with a few challenges:
Word Count Limits – (not necessarily a “two-sentence horror story” but it would be fun)
Character-Building Exercises
Something I See → Something I Write About – (an exercise introduced to me in college)
Building a poem/story around a comment/suggestion
The possibilities are endless, but I have to start somewhere! I’d better charge my keyboard and get my wrist braces.
– First Page Complete! –