Friday, October 30, 2009

The first few words

I've never met a person who doesn't want to write a book. Anyone who's ever tried knows the agony of sitting down and facing that blank, empty page and waiting for inspiration to come.

Between you and me, I find it's the first words that are the hardest. In fact, when I was primarily writing magazine articles I used to dump all of my best quotes onto the page before I ever started writing just to have that sense of having something on the page.

Here's the truth. If you can get the first 100 words down, you'll probably find yourself so caught up in the story you can't help but finish.

I'm very aware of this when I write. Sometimes I watch my word count and tick off milestones in my head. But eventually, the story takes over, and I look up in surprise and find that hundreds of words have passed me by while I stepped into another world.

It's a good feeling, and I recommend it next time you're stuck.

What gets you over the hump?

No comments:

Post a Comment