Getting started as a writer—just learning how to sit down and write—can be tricky and confusing. It’s made more difficult by the fact that there are no cut-and-dried rules for starting, no nice, clear answers to the question of where to begin. There are, however, some things you can try—steps you can take to get over that initial hurdle. Here are six tips I often give writers who aren’t sure how to start.
1. Pretend you are talking to a friend. For beginners, writing can seem like a rarefied, esoteric thing. But, at the root, writing is simply communication. When you tell a friend about something that happened to you that day, you don’t get stuck saying, “How should I begin? What should I say?” You just start. You just tell the story.
Think of your writing the same way. Imagine you are talking to a friend, or sending an email to someone you know well. What would you say to that friend? Write it.
2. Accept the fact that your first drafts will be bad. When we read writers we admire, we often think about how beautiful and powerful their writing is. What we forget about is that the beauty and power didn’t just flow out of their pens onto the page. It came about from rewriting and editing—it may have taken dozens of revisions. The first draft of the short story or novel we love was no doubt clumsy and poorly constructed.
When we sit down to write, we often think, “I want my writing to be lovely and strong, like my favorite author,” and we’re immediately stuck. What we have to do is accept the fact that the first telling of our story or the first version of our poem, may be terrible. Don’t worry about that! You have plenty of time to sharpen and hone, polish and refine. At the beginning, just get the work on the page.
3. Write one sentence, then the next. In Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg suggests a technique that helps writers get started.
Write a sentence—any sentence. Then write another sentence. Then write another, then another. For the time being, don’t worry about how they hang together or what they add up to. Just keep writing sentences.
It may sound like a waste of time, but it isn’t. As you keep writing sentences, you will find that some are intriguing and meaningful. You may find a story or poem emerging. A lot of what you write might get thrown out, but you will also find some gems. More importantly, you will begin to discover what you want to write about. Stories, poems, and essays will begin to form, almost as if on their own.
4. Try “free writing”. At the beginning of all my writing classes, I have my students put their pens to the page and write whatever comes to mind. They’re instructed not to think about what they’re writing, not to cross out or rewrite anything, and not to stop writing for even a moment until I tell them to. I usually stop them after five minutes, but when I do free writing like this myself, I set a timer for 20 minutes. This type of writing helps us warm up our writing “muscles,” by-passes the editor in our heads that blocks ideas, and is a great way to start writing when we’re not yet sure what we want to say.
5. Use writing prompts. Many writers start with prompts—short sentences or phrases that you can spring off from. They are easy to find: simply do a quick Google search for “writing prompts” and you will find hundreds.
6. Just do it. Stop worrying about how to write. Stop worrying about why to write. Stop worrying about whether you have the talent, the time, or the skill to write. Stop worrying about what to write about. Pick something: a memory, a sentence, a worry, a dream, a description of the room you are sitting in, anything. Just start writing.
Love this!
Thanks, Justin. I’m glad you found it useful.