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Friday, January 2, 2015

Starting



I’m a writer without a book.  I’ve been ‘writing’ scenes, plots, characters, and settings in my head for over 5 years, and my goal for this year is to finally put them down on paper.  It’s so easy to get lost in google with story structures, checklists, character development sheets, and conflicting advice on how to start.  I am an over planner by nature; I have post-its, notebooks, and word documents full of ideas, lists, and plot mapping… but no book.  I’ve realized the only way to get a book done is to write, just start writing.  It doesn’t have to be perfect in the first draft, it doesn’t need to go in order, it doesn’t matter that I don’t know the names, name meanings, and eye color of every character; all of that can come later.  But it needs to start somewhere, and today it starts with …. 

“He walked into the library, at least, the room that had ‘Library’ wrote on the door with faded stick-on letters.  There were not rows of neatly lined books.  There were not comfy chairs in quiet, hidden corners.  All of the donated books were piled on several large tables lined together along the back wall.”  

There it is, my first few sentences.  I don’t know ‘his’ name yet, but at least it’s a start.