On the merits of graph paper

When I was about four years old, and my coordination skills were still poor, my mother thought it best that I avoid the pratfalls of the outdoor world and pursue more indoor type activities. One afternoon, she got me a ream of quad-ruled graph paper and a box of black crayons -- as black was my favourite colour of crayon, followed very closely by white. (Even at a young age, my conservative values were evident.)

This choice of paper was curious to me. Having only ever experienced construction paper and wallpaper as media, the possibilities contained in this new, line-y paper excited me. Maybe I was too young to understand the practical purpose of those little blue squares, but I thought they were neat nonetheless.I was sitting prone on our living room floor, the stack of paper before me and the box of crayons lying next to it, filled with untouched crayons. A box of new crayons is very satisfying for a child, and I recall prying open the box with a level of care not expected of a four-year-old. Now, this is not to say I was precocious, as I remember biting into a few crayons as well.

The waxy-good taste notwithstanding, I set to work. My initial attempts with the graph paper demonstrated my obliviousness to the perpendicular lines on the page. Big fat black circles. A few triangles, but mostly wildly drawn loops, big ones, redoubled and strong. My few triangles were considerably smaller, but erratic and resembled little huts.

After a while the floor was littered black triangle and big black suns. I was getting bored.That's when I noticed the lines. Putting down my crayon, I remember touching the lines on the page, as if I expected them to be warm, or have a definite texture of their own. There was nothing. I knew both sides were lined, but I checked again, nonetheless. The pages became fascinating to me, as I could see no purpose whatsoever to pre-print blue lines on paper. I had not yet learned how to write, and plotting graphs was an activity I would wait much longer to experience. I pulled out a fresh crayon and began to experiment.

I began by tracing, with the utmost care, over a single blue line with my crayon. Lack of outdoor activities notwithstanding, I clearly had fine motor skills. When my first line was completed, I looked at it satisfied. For what was probably the first time in my short life, I had drawn a straight line. I tried again, this time perpendicular from the top of the one just drawn. To anyone watching, my intention must have been clear: I was drawing a box.

I was soon making box after box after box. Some were rectangles, but most were squares. But that's all I would draw. And after a while, I had gone through thirty pages of graph paper, having drawn nothing but squares and rectangles.

And as I drew, I remember becoming trapped in those little boxes, as though the little blue bars were the mesh of an artistic prison cell. I thought about drawing triangles again, or something else, but following the lines was pleasing and easy. I drew more squares. Try as I might, I couldn't complete a picture of anything else. I crumpled orphaned picture ideas. The only pages left intact were full with black squares and rectangles.

* * *

Twenty years later I get a package in the mail from a faraway friend: a pad of quad-ruled paper wrapped in twine. It's meant to inspire, but I realise I am still trapped by the blue grid of lines on the page. I try to make a portrait, a story, a cartoon or a simple picture, but it doesn't come. Instead, I follow the lines, and produce nothing but black squares. Perfect, banal, and ordinary.

I think that Sunday afternoon on the living room floor was my first experience with writer's block. And not for want of creativity, but because I think I allowed myself to get trapped in the habit of easy non-creative drudgery. This is what I think about when I can't write. My knees and elbows on a hardwood floor, a sea of crumpled ideas around me, and squares. Perfect empty black squares.