Just write it! That's the Secret of Being a Successful Writer

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Just write it! That's the Secret of Being a Successful Writer. "How to start?" That is the question we hear most often or even comes from ourselves when we start writing a work. After spending a few months after filling in several file folders with notes, clipping, doing research for novels, and thinking randomly, someone hasn't even started yet. But he hardly knows. "So,", "How did you start?"

Very good question. I myself ask myself the same thing every day. Or, various, how to start again, as in breaking away ...

There may be many reasons not to start because there are writers who face blank pages constantly, but I think for many of us, hanging is an anxiety about going the wrong way. Maybe you have an idea for a story, maybe it's a good idea, and before you really start writing that story, the possibilities are endless and the idea is still good. But once you start, after you start a certain path with certain characters and situations, suddenly the possibilities aren't so endless. Now you have chosen the path, and what if you go on the wrong track?

So how do you get past all that? Start writing for a benefit.

You don't have to start over

One approach is not to worry about "starting," as at first at the beginning. In We Wanted Be Be Writers, John Irving (World According to Garp, Cider House Rules, and many others) said that he started a novel by writing the last line first. "I work my way backward from the end of the novel," he said, "which is the first thing I know, for what the first chapter should be. When I actually wrote the first sentence, I had a virtual roadmap of all novels - both in note or in my head. "

I have never tried this, because I did not work that way, and Irving himself said he sincerely doubted his method would work for others. But that might be worth a try ...

Write the scene

Novelist Sandra Cisneros (House on Mango Street, Carmelo, and many other books) took another approach. He doesn't start from the beginning or end. "I don't write in a linear way," he told us. "I wrote what I call a 'button.' If I write a story, instead of starting from the beginning to the end, I just write the scene and not worry about what connects it. Maybe dialogue ... all are not sequential. I imagine I will die in eight hours, so which part of this story should I write today that I haven't written because it will be published posthumously? If I feel bored and tired of this book, I will write about someone who is tired. I only use it as a place to go, then write it and process it until it's beautiful, and then I have this little button. And my work is done. And then the next day I worked on another button, and then I combined it and began to see patterns. "

Write character

If you have ideas for stories or novels, maybe buried somewhere in the file, especially if you are a compulsive researcher like me, and you use research to delay doing what you need to do, which starts, try writing about characters which may or may not end in the story; this is exploration, after all, looking for a way, but not starting on a certain path, a bit like the Sandra button.

Give the character a name. Explain the character. Then the character does something. Someone who does something in space and time - cooking eggs, flying to Mars, visiting art galleries, or whatever - is inherently interesting, and certainly more than a character who just sits thinking; thoughts can come later, if you have to. After you have a character doing something, this might lead to a character doing something else ...

Better still, start with two characters doing something. Give them both names and explain both. If you have two characters, they can interact and talk to each other.

Write about dialogue

One of our 30-plus teachers in Iowa a year ago, the late novelist Vance Bourjaily (My End of Life, the Breaking, and many others) was a conflict that revealed character, desires, and what was at stake. He also added that bad people must get a better line. Action and dialogue are ways to get into the character's head, and, indeed your own head, and thus in finding stories. You might end up tracing what you have written, but if it leaves you, what do you do? Remember, this is about exploration at this point.

Other teachers suggest that having a conversation with your character is a way of finding out who they are and what they want, as a way to find your story. I was working on a novel at the time and it happened everywhere and I lost enthusiasm. I don't need to start, but I definitely need a butt kick.

So I took my teacher's advice. I asked each character how he finally became a fugitive, and I got an answer. I set it up as a series of dialogues, and I was amazed at how characters began to take new life and speak for themselves when I gave them the opportunity to tell me what they wanted and what stories they should have.

It's interesting, freeing practice because I am free from the burden of worrying about how each character can fit into the plot; how they fit was not a problem at the time. Ideas for each character, new insights about who they are and what they want and, of course, about how stories should be revealed. Now I do this regularly. Of course, in our culture, having conversations with imaginary characters leads to regular administration of psychoactive drugs, but if you know, let's say you're a writer and that should be fine.