flashquake Editor's Corner

A Blank Sheet of Paper
by Vanitha Sankaran

When I was a child, I carried a blank sheet of paper with me wherever I went. It's in all our old photographs that are now faded over the years. My parents still tease me about it; my sister spoke about it at my wedding. Of how I asked for, even demanded, that sheet of paper for my writings. Not just any sheet would do. It had to be pristine, not crumpled, and with no spillage from someone else's pen to mix with my imaginings. I don't remember what I wrote on those pages; no one else ever looked. That I carried the pages everywhere was the amusing foible.

To say this habit was the start of a long and productive writing career would be prosaic. Following my writing dreams has not come easily; it has taken years of rejecting those dreams to realize that they own me. As a child, I kept detailed journals, but when my privacy was invaded, I abandoned them immediately. Later I turned to fiction, took classes, and wrote stories. But at school and home, there was enormous pressure to focus on subjects vital to a prosperous career — math and science made the list; the liberal arts did not. For a minority girl with a head for science, my school counselor said, the opportunities were not to be missed. My parents agreed. The decision was made and I went into engineering. I didn't have the maturity to argue against it. My ambitions were thwarted once more.

I tried to keep writing. Between classes and extracurricular activities, there just wasn't enough time. I didn't have the drive, I convinced myself, likely the talent either, and buried myself in my studies. Soon I started graduate school and my writing was confined to abstracts and scientific papers. Concise. Impersonal. No tricks for dramatic effect. The exhilaration of writing creatively, imagining characters and plots and worlds, gradually faded.

A talent not nurtured is eventually lost. But dreams and regrets aren't. The demons of not writing plagued me. After ten years of struggling to persuade myself I was no longer a writer and mourning lost chances, I decided to try again. I bought a notebook and stared at the blank page, willing my imagination on. A set of equations dribbled out. I tried again, took my notebook to the beach and looked to the ocean for my muse. A torrent of words flowed out of me. It was the first chapter to my dissertation — I had failed again.

It would take time, I told myself, and kept at it. Writing anecdotes, analyzing classics, anything to create a vibrant sentence, even a snippet of words, that wasn't science. Nothing worked. I might have quit, had my life not taken a sudden and profound turn. I fell into a state of deep sadness, spent months in despair. I was unable to work, subject to fits of tears, sometimes not even able to leave my bed. The intensity of my hopelessness stirred something familiar inside. Rusty and nervous, I put words to my feelings, and began keeping a journal again. Soon I was writing in it every day.

Writing didn't cure my depression; it allowed me vent the inner turmoil that seemed otherwise inexpressible. My despair and futility poured onto the paper — I wrote pages of purple prose. In time, I learned to cope with my depression. By then, I'd gotten used to writing again, and to my surprise, I got better. I joined online critique groups and dredged up the courage to share my work. Two years later, I have the confidence to call myself a writer, have been published in numerous venues, and continue writing every day.

It's been a long road, but I find myself at the place where I started, impelled to write and carrying that scrap of paper with me wherever I go. My scribbles are usually no more than an inspired phrase or germ for a story.

I feel like I've found myself again.

Copyright 2002 by the Vanitha Sankaran

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