Begin By Beginning

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I have shelves of books on writing — prompts, plotting, meditations, how-tos for almost every genre, technical books on forensics and police procedure, history overviews for Medieval and Renaissance periods. I also have books on writing and the writing life by Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, to name just a few. Over the past couple of decades, I’ve read so many books on writing, tried using prompts, was part of two different writing critique groups and have been a member of both the Romance Writers of America and the Florida Writers Association. I’ve attended conferences, writer showcases, and I even “won” NaNoWriMo in 2018.

I have on my hard drive (transferred from the previous hard drive, and also transferred from the one before that) a few short stories, the first 3K, 6K, even 21K of various attempts at novels. I also have several boxes of completed journals, practicing what Julia Cameron tells me is the best way to release my creativity: Morning Pages. It turns out that for me, daily journaling has allowed me to free myself from fear and anxiety related to almost every aspect of my life, except the prospect of a blank page, or worse, a page full of amazingly inane drivel rendered in my own hand.

Anne Lamott tells me that every first draft is shitty. Stephen King has said that it’s the finishing of projects for which he, or any writer, gets paid. Hemingway (or Red Smith or Paul Gallico) said that writing is as easy as opening a vein.

And so I find myself, once again, at a blank page in a half-filled notebook. The first section of the first chapter in Jack Heffron’s “The Writer’s Idea Book”, directs the frustrated writer to show up, set a timer, and allow one’s self to do nothing during that time except write. I sit at my desk, in my office that only has the bottom half of a Dutch door (more on that at a later time) to shield me from household distractions and interruptions, my Pomodoro timer set for 30 minutes. I have cleared my desk (mostly), sharpened my Blackwing 602 pencil (Half The Pressure, Twice The Speed!) and opened the shutters to allow the winter sunshine to warm the room and hopefully a few brain cells.

On page 7 of Jack’s book, he tells us, “If you want to write, you must begin by beginning, continue by continuing, and finish by finishing.”

And so I have begun.