Beating the Blank Page

The hardest part of writing isn't writing — it's starting. The blank page, the blinking cursor, the fifteen minutes of "how do I even open this." AI's single biggest gift to your week is that it makes the blank page disappear.

The move: never start from nothing. Give AI the gist and let it produce a rough draft to react to. Reacting to a draft is ten times easier than generating one — your brain switches from "create from scratch" (hard) to "fix what's wrong" (easy).

"Draft a short email to my team announcing that Friday's meeting is moved to Monday at 10. Keep it casual and brief."

In seconds you have something on the page. It won't be perfect — it doesn't need to be. It needs to be there, so you can shape it.

Why this works even when the draft is mediocre: a bad first draft still solves the two hardest problems — it breaks the inertia and it shows you what you don't want, which instantly clarifies what you do. You'll often rewrite half of it, and that's fine. Half a rewrite beats a whole blank page.

One caution to carry through this course: speed is the benefit, but your judgment is still the product. AI gets you to a draft fast; whether that draft is right, true, and appropriately yours is your call. We'll keep coming back to that.

▶️ Try this

Think of a piece of writing you've been avoiding. Give AI one sentence of context and ask for a rough draft. Don't aim for perfect — just get something on the page you can react to. Notice how the dread drops the second there are words to fix.