Listen:
(Full episode transcript below show notes)
Okay, okay — I know it may seem like “How To Start Writing” might not be applicable to those of you who are already writing. But no matter where you are in your writing journey, what do we do when we write but sit down to the page… and start?
I was initially tempted to make this episode two words long: “Just write!” But I realize that “Just write!” is not helpful advice — sort of like, “Just stop worrying!” is extremely not helpful advice for people with anxiety. As with most things, it’s more complicated than that.
So in this episode, I wanted to think about what it took — for me, and maybe for you — to start writing every day. And as I followed that train of thought, I realized that stories don’t begin with the first word on the page. They begin with us.
I know it seems over-complicated, but establishing the following in your mind (if not in a journal) will help you set expectations for yourself and start in a place that’s right for you:
1. Acknowledge where you are, without judgment or self-criticism. And if you, like so many writers, feel like you don’t have the “right” background or credentials — a degree, a certain number of creative writing classes, etc. — I want you to remember that Jane Austen didn’t have an MFA. She just sat down and wrote. And so can you.
2. Understand what you want to get out of the writing experience — is your goal to publish a book, process your thoughts, share a story that’s burning a hole in your heart, or simply have fun?
3. Don’t expect to be amazing — or even good — right away. Seriously. Your work will not line up with the vision you have of it in your head, and that is perfectly normal. Even “experts” will go through tons of drafts before they get it right. We just don’t get to see all the crumpled-up papers in Hemingway’s trash can.
4. Start with whatever you’re most excited to write. If you’re excited to put down the first word of your novel, a paragraph about your main character’s backstory, a brief five-bullet-point outline of the plot, or a memory about your grandmother, write that first. If you’re not exactly sure where to begin, try a writing prompt, journaling, fanfiction, or even imitating your favorite writer. Whichever you choose, remember to follow your sense of curiosity and wonder. Your work will be better for it.
5. Don’t worry about the rules right now — processes are highly individualized and not every writer’s advice will work for you. You’re an artist, and your job is to experiment. Trial-and-error has been the best teacher I’ve ever had.
6. Be gentle with yourself, especially since obstacles like fear and doubt can crop up like wildfire. If (and when) that happens, remember why you started writing, and what you want to get out of it. If your brain has started to melt and you’re not having fun, take a break and get back to it later.
I hope this episode is helpful for you, and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts. How do you get started writing — and where do you begin?
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Full Episode Transcript:
Sarah Rhea Werner (00:00)
This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 165: How To Start Writing.
(00:26):
Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers — aspiring, professional, and otherwise — to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and today I want to talk about a fundamental piece of the writing puzzle — and that is, “How do I start?”
(00:49):
You may have noticed that I left the title of this episode purposefully ambiguous because I want it to apply to two different types of writers. The first type being those of you who haven’t technically started yet, and who are maybe listening to this podcast to get an idea of what it means or what it takes to actually start writing a story. The second audience is those of you who have maybe in the past done some writing, but you find yourself perhaps at a loss in need of some inspiration, in need of a reminder about how and why to do this thing that you feel compelled and driven to do.
(01:29):
Even if you are an established writer, even if you are pretty far down the proverbial writing path, you still have to start every day. I do this myself. I wake up, I make my coffee, I feed the cats, I sit down in my office, and I have to start. And sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes I have left myself a little trail of breadcrumbs from the day before. Maybe I’ve left off in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of a paragraph or in the middle of an idea. Maybe I’ve left myself a little handwritten note for the next day, like, “Hey, go through this scene and add this and or this.”
(02:07):
But there are also days when I sit down and I open my laptop and it takes me a while as I sit my coffee and the caffeine slowly enters my bloodstream into my brain to figure out… what are those weird little markings on the screen? Oh, those are words. Okay, what do they mean? Where was I going with this? How do I jump back in? How do I make this sound good and smart and relevant?
(02:35):
And there are other days when I’m not just jumping back into something I’ve already started, but I’m sitting down and either I open my laptop or I open a notebook (because I like to brainstorm by hand and write first drafts by hand), and I will look at that blank page and say, “Okay, a giant magnificent story needs to go here. How do I start?”
(03:00):
So whether you identify with that first audience of people who maybe have an idea that they want to try writing or they want to get into writing, maybe they have a story to tell — yes, you, maybe you have a story to tell — or whether you are a little bit further along your writing journey and you are just looking for the motivation and inspiration to open your laptop or open your notebook and continue to restart, to jump back into where you left off… These are both perfectly valid. We are going to talk about both of those today.
(03:34):
If you are looking to start writing, I’m really excited for you. You have a beautiful and transformative and maybe-perhaps-a-little-difficult-sometimes road ahead of you, and I’m really glad that you’re here with us. Storytelling is an innate urge that we as humans have. There are a lot of theories as to why this is, but for whatever reason, we are motivated and driven and even educated by narrative, by a story. A story is a snack-sized bit of the human experience that we can ingest and parse meaning from and learn from and take joy in (because yes, entertainment is a perfectly valid reason to write, but we’ll get into that in just a second).
(04:25):
If you’ve ever seen the movie The Sound of Music, you may recall Julie Andrews singing, “Let’s start at the very beginning, A very good place to start!” And that would seem like good advice for starting a story, for looking at how to start writing start at the beginning, but… what IS the beginning?
(04:46):
When we’re talking about writing, when we’re talking about diving into a piece of art, what does that beginning look like? Is it the first word on the page? Is it the title that we’ve thought of in our head or is it us? Is it ourselves? I know it’s easy to jump ahead and start thinking about beat sheets and three x structure versus five x structure and metaphors and pacing and tension and character arcs, but that can get really overwhelming really quickly, and so I think that when we get started writing, no matter if you are just getting started or if you are a professional, a good place to start is to ground yourself, to be present and begin by acknowledging who you are and where you are.
(05:32):
This can be as simple as, “I’m Sarah, I have a story to tell, and I’m really excited to start typing.” Or it can be a little more introspective and you can say, “Okay, my name is Sarah and I’m feeling anxious. I don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to write. I am not a professional, but writing sounds cool and fun and I have some aspirations to express myself or to get published, et cetera.” The key here is to be honest about where you are in your writing journey and not to disparage yourself. I’ve been writing for years and it is still very easy for me to sit down in the morning and say, “Okay, I’m Sarah and I’ve no idea what I’m doing.” I mean, which is true because the more you learn about writing, the more you realize all of the things that you don’t know you don’t know, but it won’t do to start off by tearing yourself down by saying, “Ugh, I’m Sarah and this is probably going to suck, and why am I bothering doing this anyway?” And then you close your laptop or your notebook and then you run away.
(06:40):
I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want you to start off this whole experience berating yourself. A simple acknowledgement without judgment will do. And if you’re sort of caught up in the idea that, “I’ve never taken a writing class, I don’t have a writing degree,” I have to tell you — I have taken writing classes and I do have a writing degree, and I think I learned just as much by growing up reading, and reading as an adult, and reading thoughtfully than I did out of any of my classes in high school or college.
(07:14):
It may also help you to remember that people like Jane Austen — famous novelists — I’m pretty sure she didn’t have an MFA (which is a master’s in fine arts). I’m also relatively sure she didn’t go to college, or even high school. She didn’t have a degree on her wall as far as I’m aware that ascertained that, yes, you are certified Jane Austen, you have permission to write.
(07:41):
I talk to a lot of aspiring writers who really get down on themselves because they don’t have the “right degree” or the “right number” of classes that they’ve taken when really, those things, those credentials, are a relatively new invention. And in fact, the things that you learn in a creative writing class, in a degree program for creative writing, those are all based on works and examples written by people who did not have that education themselves.
(08:12):
Next, I’d like you to think: what do you want out of this whole process? What do you want out of the writing experience? What do you want to get out of this? Do you want to write because you have a story to tell, that you are excited to share with the world? Do you want to write because you feel yourself strangely compelled to write? Do you want to get published? Do you want to just process your own thoughts and get them down on paper? Do you want to entertain people? Do you want to entertain yourself? Are you bored? Did your therapist tell you that you needed to do some writing?
(08:48):
Whatever your reason, they are all extremely valid, but I think it’s important to understand what you want out of the experience, whether it’s a feeling or a tangible goal, because that will help you set your expectations and ultimately will help you understand whether or not you’ve been successful in this whole endeavor.
(09:09):
Speaking of expectations, whether you are just getting started or you’ve published 10 books, don’t expect every single word you put down onto the page, physical or digital, to be amazing or even good. This is a frustration for writers at all levels — and that is, your work, the writing that you produce, will probably not line up exactly with the version of it that exists in your head. And that’s okay. That’s normal.
(09:41):
Our job as writers is to extract that vision we have in our heads and translate it onto the page. And as we get more proficient in the craft, the translation will get better and better. But I know a lot of writers who start out and they hammer out the first paragraph of their dream novel and they read it later and they’re like, “This is terrible. I’m a terrible writer.” And then they give up.
(10:10):
And maybe this is you. Maybe this is something you’ve experienced. It’s definitely something I have experienced — that sense of frustration that, “This is not coming out how I wanted it to come out,” or, “This is not that good.” That’s normal. Part of the issue comes because we compare what we are starting with to other people’s published work, and what you see in front of you is your own messy notes and drafts and thoughts, and what you see when you pick up a published book is everything but the notes and thoughts and messy draft. We don’t get to look inside Hemingway’s trash can. We don’t get to see all those crumpled up pages full of mistakes and spilled ink. We don’t get to see all of the times that he messed up. But we do see that in our own work.
(11:05):
So I want to say this as an encouragement to you: go into the experience hopeful and aspirational and even ambitious — those are all good things. But don’t go in demanding. Don’t go in judging, even if you’re not a perfectionist (like many of us are). If you go into this experience expecting the Great American Novel to come out on the first try, you’re going to be disappointed. So whether you stick with it or not and eventually do publish that great American novel depends on your expectations. Are you getting out of this experience what you expected and you maybe need to readjust your expectations or rewrite them entirely?
(11:49):
Another question that gets wrapped up into the whole how to start thing is the question of where to start. And this is a more practical question than a lot of the other ones we’ve been talking about today. “Where do I start? Do I just open up a notebook and put words on it? Do I just jump right into writing chapter one of my novel, or do I need to do some character sketches first? Do I need an outline? How do I know, if I have a lot of stories in my head, how do I know which one to tell? Where do I start with that?” So I’m going to break this down for you, because there’s a lot to cover here.
(12:25):
Many writers get started writing fan fiction. I didn’t have a term for it at the time, but when I started writing, I remember, my novel that I wrote in seventh grade, I wrote because I had seen “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” for the first time, and I was in love with it and I wanted to write my own characters in this world of space wizards. Fanfiction is a perfectly valid place to start.
(12:52):
Adjacent to that is… I don’t know if this actually has a term, but I know when I was sort of learning to write, I would find a book that I really loved and I would just copy down sentences that that author had written in the story to get a feel for what it was like on the page. Now, this was not plagiarism because I wasn’t publishing it. I was just literally copying it down into a notebook to see what it felt like to write those words, and then when I felt like I had internalized it a little bit, I would try writing my own. This is a good way for new writers to start to develop their voice, is to understand, “Is this something that I would say? Is this something that I would write?” and to begin to understand what makes you different from other writers.
(13:36):
Another place to start is simply free writing, which is where you open up a Word document or you pick up a notebook or a typewriter or wherever it is you prefer to write, and you just let the words come out in a sort of stream-of-consciousness fashion. This sort of writing will probably not be ready for publication immediately, but it’s a really good way to just start to get past that initial barrier of fear, to get past the blinking cursor or the blank page. I know some people who just write down random words until their brain engages and finds the thread of a story and begins to follow it.
(14:14):
Sort of akin to free writing is journaling, and there’s so many different types of journaling. I will not go into them right now — I think I actually have several episodes, or at least one episode, about journaling, so I’ll have a link to that in the show notes for this episode. But even just opening up a journal and processing, “What am I noticing right now” — this is an exercise I do a lot to get started. In the morning, I’ll just… in my journal, I will write down the word “Noticing” in all caps, and then underneath that I’ll just start to write down: What am I hearing? What am I feeling? What does this coffee taste like today? Is my brain not willing to move forward because it’s stuck on a dream that I had that I need to explore? What am I worried about? What am I looking forward to?
(15:00):
This is something similar to a practice called “Morning Pages” that Julia Cameron is famous for… I don’t know if “inventing” is the right word, because it’s literally just writing whatever’s in your brain to clear it out and prepare yourself for sitting down to write your story. And it’s useful for some people, and it’s not useful for other people.
(15:19):
And the biggest and most frustrating piece of advice I can give you is that… most of this you’ll only know if it’s right for you by trial and error. So if you’ve tried writing fanfiction and you hate it, that doesn’t mean that you’re not a writer or you can’t write. It just means you need to try a different type of writing. If you found that you hate five-paragraph essays — I don’t even know if they make people write those in school still, but when I was going to school, we had to write five paragraph essays — if you loathe those, if every time you are assigned a five-paragraph essay, your soul dies or feels like it’s crumpling up in your chest, like one of Earnest Hemingway’s mistake papers, you don’t have to write five-paragraph essays in your free time! You can write a romance. You can write a screenplay. You can write some really angry poetry about having to write five-paragraph papers. A lot of people love journaling. A lot of people hate journaling. But most of the time you don’t know until you give it a try.
(16:19):
Be willing to experiment because, as we were talking about with expectations earlier, maybe you have this dream of becoming a famous poet, but really, when you put pen to paper, you realize, “Oh, I’m actually really good at long-form storytelling. Oh, okay.” Personally, I grew up dreaming about becoming a novelist. I wanted to write books when I grew up, and I didn’t even know until I started experimenting with the medium that I could write for audio that I could write scripted podcasts and audio dramas, and that experimentation allowed my career to take off.
(16:58):
Another thing I haven’t mentioned is the use of writing prompts. So these are ideas that will get you writing, and they come in a lot of different formats. So you might see a writing prompt that says, “Recall a time when you felt sad,” or you might see a prompt that is a picture of a rabbit playing a cello, and be asked to write a story about that. There are prompts everywhere, especially now that we have the internet. All you have to do is Google “writing prompts” and start to look through, if this sounds like something that would be good for you to experiment with, look through and see what’s available. See what kind of prompts are interesting to you. What seems fun to write about? Curiosity and whimsy and a sense of joy are all extremely valid reasons to write, and following those feelings can often lead to some excellent work.
(17:51):
I know we’re still talking about the “where” to start writing, and I want to be very clear, if I haven’t been clear enough about this already, that there is no right or wrong way to write. I have a podcast episode about this. If you go back to Episode 142 — it’s called “No Rules, Just Write” (like W-R-I-T-E, haha puns) — and I’ll have a link to that episode in the show notes for this episode. But the entire point is, writing is personal, writing is subjective, writing is art.
(18:24):
I know that there’s a lot of shoulds and do nots out there when it comes to writing. I know that there’s a lot of rules. I am constantly coming across articles and podcast episodes and videos that are like, “The Top 10 Things To Never Do An A Story,” or, “Three Things You Should Never Do In Character Development.” There are people who say you should write every day. There are people who say you should not write every day. There are people who say you should start with an outline. There are people who say outlines are for chumps. There are people who say you should not end a sentence with a preposition. There are people who say you should start with your characters in mind. There are other people who say you should start with the plot in mind.
(19:13):
There is so much writing advice out there, and there are so many rules that have been constructed around this medium, and over the years I’ve kind of found that I’ve lost patience with them. Some things make sense — if the hero of your story, if the first thing the main character of your story does, is murder a puppy, I think people are going to have a hard time identifying with and cheering for that hero. So… common sense. But I’m still not going to say you shouldn’t do that, because it might be, for some people, a very interesting character arc to see how this hero is going to come back from having murdered a puppy. And can they come back? And what are the ramifications in their life? And what do other people think about them? And why did they do it?
(20:00):
I know a lot of us tend to look for guidelines about how to do something “the right way” because it is so frustrating and time-consuming to feel your way through the process. So I want to say, if guidelines work for you, if they’re sort of like the bumpers in bowling that keep your ball in the lane and headed toward the pins, then totally take advantage of those. But take them with a grain of salt. Experiment with them. Keep your mind open. If a piece of advice someone gives you feels wrong, or if you try experimenting with it, and it just isn’t going anywhere for you, and you feel defeated and your heart feels like someone stepped on it, then stop that rule because it’s not for you.
(20:50):
A lot of people recommend Stephen King’s book On Writing as a really good place to start and just pick up some guidelines for writing. It’s sort of an autobiography/writing guide, and I’ve read it several times. Stephen King’s path is Stephen King’s path. Stephen King says to write every day, because that’s what works for him. I went through a time when I tried writing every day and I burned myself out and sank into a terrible depression. Stephen King also did a bunch of drugs that I would not want to do, and made some choices that I might not have made. However, it can often be helpful or inspirational to read books about how to write, to feel a sense of solidarity with other writers, to learn from other mistakes that other writers have made, and to take away from those books what works for you.
(21:45):
Please know you also have permission to discard any of that writing advice that does not work for you. You can write a novel where you end every sentence with a preposition, and if it works, it works. If you would feel more comfortable structuring your story around an outline, then give it a try. If it works for you, it works. And if it doesn’t, then you can say, “Okay, outlining does not work for me, and I am moving on.”
(22:11):
The question of “where” to start writing can also be interpreted in a more literal sense, as in: “Where am I going to sit down and write? Where am I going to find the time to write?” And I have entire episodes of this podcast dedicated to questions like that. So for example, if you go back to episode 14 of the Write Now podcast, which I will have a link to in the show notes for today’s episode, that episode is called “Creating A Space for Writing,” and it’s all about — do you go to a coffee shop to write? Do you write at home before work? Do you write during your commute? Do you need to have a cup of coffee in order to write? Do you need to have music? Do you need to have complete silence? So for those of you interested in the literal “where to write” question, check out that episode.
(23:00):
One final thing I want to address in today’s episode about “how to start writing” is the things that keep us from writing; the things that keep us from starting. I recorded an episode about this back in 2015 — the very first episode of the Write Now Podcast — it’s called, “What’s Keeping You From Writing?” and I’m not sure if I want to link to that in the show notes or not, because it’s a really old episode. But it still has some valid points. But basically, there are so many fears and so many things that stand in our way. For whatever reason, when it comes to the desire to write a story, the desire to write, and the act of writing it. Worries about what other people will think, worries as to whether we’re any good or not. There are fears about failure and also, perhaps strangely, fears about success. I’ve been hosting this podcast for 10 years, and over those years I’ve addressed the many, many, many things that keep us from writing. (I’ll have some of those bullet pointed in the show notes for you if there’s a specific one that speaks to you.) There are fears about wasting our time, about how we’re perceived, about all the work that’s involved, about succeeding, failing, about facing certain emotions. It’s all there.
(24:24):
So, in answering this big question of, “How do we start writing?” the best piece of advice I can give you is to jump into it knowing who you are, who you want to be, and what you want this writing experience to look like. What you want to get out of this experience. There is no surefire way that works for everyone. There is no silver bullet that solves all of the problems that you might face. There are no guarantees that if you start with an outline, you will get a perfect or good or excellent or award-winning novel. All there is is you sitting down at the page and getting started.
(25:05):
My advice is: write what delights you. Write what brings you joy and fulfillment and meaning. Write because you feel compelled to tell a story. Write because you want to write. And remember, no one actually knows what they’re doing. Even people like me who spout advice — most of the time, we just feel like scared little kids. Which is why I encourage you to experiment, to write what interests you, and fills you up with light. And do the best that you can with what you have.
(25:39):
I hope this was a helpful episode. I’m always tempted to cover every single thing about a topic in an episode, and this topic was just too broad to cover everything. So I will, as I mentioned before, have links to helpful episodes of the Write Now podcast in the show notes for today’s episode. This is, again, episode number 165. You can find the show notes for this episode either in the podcast app that you’re listening to right now, or you can go out to my website, Sarah Werner dot com — that’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R dot com — and navigate to episode 165 of the Write Now Podcast.
(26:18):
On my website, you will find not only the show notes for today’s episode, but also a comment section. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, I know it’s underneath the show notes and the transcript and all the other stuff, but at the very bottom of the page, there’s a place where I would honestly love to hear your thoughts. What is your answer to the question, “How do I start writing?” Where do you start? I am deeply curious to know. So again, let me know, in the comments for this episode, your thoughts and your experience. I read and respond to every comment I receive out on my website, so I hope to see you there.
(26:55):
If you would like to support the work that I’m doing here at the Write Now podcast, and if you would like to help keep it ad-free for everyone, then please consider donating $1, $2, or what have you, to the work that I’m doing. You can do that through Patreon, you can do it through Ko-fi slash “coffee”, you can do it through PayPal. Whatever it is, however it is, I am deeply grateful to all of the people who donate and keep this show going.
(27:25):
Special thanks go out to patrons: Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Amber Fratesi, Charmaine Ferreira, Kim, Mike Tefft, Poppy Brown, Summer, Tiffany Joyner, and Whitney Magruder. Thank you all so much for your generous donations. Again, if you would like to donate to the show, you can go out to my website and click on the button or link that says “Support the Show.” I would deeply appreciate it.
(27:53):
And with that, this has been episode 165 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers — aspiring, professional, and otherwise — to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion (or even discover that you have a passion!) and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I’m so excited to see what you write.