tell me about silence. all writers know about silence, even if they talk and chatter all the time. it’s at their back. silence drives them into the radiant light. 
(i love that.)
silence. if you know me, you know it’s my thing. my mojo. what you don’t know is that my brain is never, ever silent. i try to meditate before i go to bed to make my mind calm down so i can shut it off long enough to slip into slumber, and it doesn’t work. when i’m silent, you’d better know that my gears are running at full speed, probably even more so than a chatty person, because i feel this pressure to say the right thing.
but that’s not what ms. goldberg is talking about. she’s talking about the silence that pushes a writer: the silence of a blank page, of the next word that needs to materialize in your brain so it can flow through fingertips to paper or screen. when you write, there is this push, need, drive to fill a void with what you know or have to say. when you can’t find the words to put down, or you can’t put into words what you want to say, then silence – the blank page – is suffocating. it takes everything in you to push a little further and break the surface, silent white no more.