Getting Started
A partial excerpt from my book:
A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting
So you want to write a book. Or a blog. Or an essay. An intriguing idea has captured your imagination and you feel haunted. It plays out in your dreams and it follows you everywhere you go. You feel hopeful and inspired. You can hardly wait to get the words on the page and you believe you can do it. Why not? But first you have figure out how to get started. It’s all in the way you think about it.
Writing is a simple act that involves arranging and rearranging twenty-six letters on a blank page – with some punctuation thrown in for clarification. I call it simple, but there are a lot of challenging decisions to make along the way. Your array of letters are at the ready in your virtual tool box. Your screen is like a vision board that dictates where you are and where you're going. Your ideas are beacons that light up the path and your mind is like a stovetop with pots simmering on every burner, waiting for your attention.
When you’re inspired, the pots boil over faster than your hands can skim across the keys. Like a planchette gliding soundlessly over a Ouija board, when you choose a direction, any direction, your fingers take on a mind of their own. You get so immersed in your alternate world, you lose time and place as you set out to create something that didn’t exist before. It’s like chasing a dream and searching for a way to seize it and hold it firmly in your grasp.
When you’re not inspired, it takes a world of patience and grit to stay focused as you hope and pray for the writing muse to grace you with her presence. It’s like getting a flat tire and waiting for Triple A to come and rescue you. It could take a long time or the muse may show up in a minute. Or not at all. Like a hummingbird, flitting, sipping sweet nectar from scarlet poppies and purple petunias and taking off again, the muse is here one minute, gone the next. But whether or not she comes and however long she stays, your job is the same – to start writing.
Although the well known adage, A Writer Writes, sounds pretty straightforward, it's no easy task to allow the process to begin in its own way, in its own time, without trying to control it. We human beings abhor being out of control, but that’s what good writing requires. We have to learn to start somewhere, to live in the midst of chaos and tolerate not knowing where we're headed or what might show up. None of the steps are quick, easy, or tie themselves up in neat little bundles. We have to keep moving forward anyway, blindfolded and trusting, loose ends hanging everywhere, hoping that we end up with something heartfelt and authentic.
The writer’s life is made up of unfinished ideas, dangling participles, and flashes of memory that seem unreachable, all powered by a yearning to tell a story or share a teaching. Moving forward takes determination, organization, stamina, more stamina, a willingness to listen to informed criticism, and a mighty desire to express yourself and your ideas without filters. It also takes a lot of encouragement and fortitude to get on the path and stay there.
You start out as a leader, dreaming up ideas, shaping your material and placing the words where you think they belong. But with a little luck, you become a follower as you watch the words come pouring out and rearranging themselves as if you had nothing to do with it. It’s almost as if your work starts writing itself. This is what every writer yearns for – getting into the zone and allowing the progression to just happen. It’s like watching a wave crash onto the shore and ebb out, leaving crabs, colorful seashells, and strings of seaweed in its wake. These are like pearls of writing wisdom, the hidden gems that inspire you to dive into your psyche, unearth the secrets that are hidden away, illuminate them and express them boldly.
It may take some discipline to zero in at first. Pearls, in all their pristine beauty, are created slowly, as a response to an irritant, a grain of sand, that annoys the oyster so much, it can take years to coat it with layers of nacre as a defense mechanism. In much the same way, your tidbits of thoughts that appear on the page are responses to challenges that need to be faced and dealt with. But deep down, no matter how much we stress and complain, we writers like a good challenge. We like the way it awakens us mentally and creatively.
If you become impossibly blocked and starting your work feels like an impossible task, my advice is to begin in the middle. Or write the ending at the beginning and the beginning at the end. Just put your fingers on the keyboard and let them skim across the letters with no judgment or direction from you. Let it fly and do your best to pluck the thoughts out of your head, get them onto the page and see what shows up.
When I decide to begin a piece, I may start and stop five times, writing, deleting and writing again until something feels right. I don’t get frustrated. I used to, but now I understand that deleting is not going backwards. Every version of my writing is a step along the way to the end result. They all become a part of the foundation, a building block that holds my piece in place as I work around it, back and forth, until I see connections showing up and weaving it all together. No matter what part of my piece I’m working on, I get an odd kind of satisfaction listening to the click of the keyboard and watching words appear on the screen. It helps me keep on going.
As a so-called writing coach, I don't think anyone can teach anyone else to write in the literal sense. I can encourage my students to sit down at the computer, to make friends with their inner critic, to remove the obstacles to their creativity and to allow their natural talent to shine through. The rest is a mystery that will work itself through with some discipline and dedication. When you make a commitment to trust your instincts and flex your writing muscles day after day, they will become strong, dependable and available.