How to Write a Blank Book

Leave a blank page for the "absence of the words: those that slipped away with darkness, leaving a blank page in last night's memory: lost now, having disappeared into silent regret but bound by hope that the muse will return with her gift."

Forestall the pain of the future for a while

Within the blank pages of an unwritten book.

—Mark Kavanaugh, Poems and Wondering Thoughts.  

See our own hacker-proof blank book, Let's Do and Say We Didn't.

From our unpublished guide on How to Write a Blank Book: here's a poor unhappy blank book with no hope of ever becoming great.  From Half-Hours With Jimmieboy by John Kendrick Bangs, 1893.

"It is sometimes necessary to leave a page blank in order that the preface, contents, introduction, first page of the text, appendix, and index may begin on a recto page."

From our unpublished guide on How to Write a Blank Book:

—Russ Girsberger, A Manual for the Performance Library, 2006.

"If you want a blank page, leave a page blank."

"Leave a page blank in the beginning [for autographs]."

"Leave a page blank at the beginning to make an index."

From The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure by C. D. Rose, 2014.

From our unpublished guide on How to Write a Blank Book:

"I need to be alone from myself, so much so that I don't even rely on God.  And so I'll leave a page blank or the rest of the book—I'll come back when I can."

—Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life, 2012.

Meanwhile, here's our twist (two twists, in fact) on blank books: Let's Do and Say We Didn't and What Happened in Vegas.  Why is one more expensive than the other?  Is the more expensive one better?  You'll be able to judge for yourself.

From our unpublished guide on How to Write a Blank Book:

—Cultural Artifacts and the Production of Meaning: The Page, the Image, and the Body, 1994.

"Tonight I shall leave a page blank for the morrow when the first boisterous crows will awaken me to another world ... a new world full of promise."