The Writer’s Life—Part IV

How’s your writing coming along?  Did you practice any yesterday?

I hope so!

Do you ever find it hard to get started?

Yeah...me, too.  It happens to me like ALL the time.

Staring at a Blank Canvass

Starting at the beginning of something can be daunting, can it not?  Especially, if that something is the sketching of the outlines for an oil painting, the launching of a new exercise program, or the writing of a poem, an essay, or a story—of any kind.  While I will, from time to time, write about art, health, and exercise, today I'm going to focus on writing—again.  And, more specifically, on beginning the writing of a fictional piece—be it a short story or an epic novel.

Beginning....in the Middle

What if…instead of starting at Chapter 1, Page 1, we started at Chapter 6, Page 117?  And, in doing so, actually believed that we’d already written the first 116 pages of our story?  Doing such a thing would involve, yes, a little “temporary suspension of disbelief,” but maybe not entirely.  In each of us, there’s a story just waiting to be told.  And it’s been brewing—perhaps for a really long time.  We can see it, taste it, feel it—even see other people reading it…

…but that’s not the problem, is it?

No.

THE problem—and it’s universal among ALL writers—is the actual WRITING of it, whatever IT might be.  Or, maybe, it’s just the getting started part.

Either way…if we don’t write, IT won’t get written…and everyone on earth will suffer.  Now how’s that for a little motivation?  What if I told you that if you don’t write your story, everyone on earth will suffer—horribly and gruesomely?  Could you really live with yourself if such were the case?  Oh...wait a minute…I promised that I would NOT give you a hard time about your writing (or lack thereof).  My apologies, my friends.  Please forgive and forget what I just wrote above.  In fact, please feel free to just delete from your memory this paragraph in its entirety.

So…getting back to what I was driving at before I so rudely interrupted myself.

Yeah…so what if we just made up in our minds—and allowed ourselves to really believe—that we’d completed writing close to half our story and then proceeded with the rest of it accordingly?  You don’t have to start at Chapter 6, though.  For a children's chapter book, perhaps starting somewhere in Chapters 2 or 3 might work.  Or, if you’re working on an epic, Tom Clancyish, techno-thriller, starting at Chapter 27 (!!) might be a more realistic half-way point.  (For the record—and this should probably not be a surprise to anyone, I’m a HUGE Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan fan and a COLOSSAL A. A. Milne/Winnie the Pooh fan.  What would life be like without John Patrick Ryan of the CIA?  Or Pooh Bear and Piglet of The Hundred Acre Wood?  It just wouldn’t be the same—at least, not for me!)

Anyway…

Wherever the half-way point is in your story, imagine the kind of exuberance and momentum you might feel if you really were at that place in your story?  Where you’re knee-deep into the crux of your storyline, its dramatic conflicts, the character turning-points, and the central message you wish to convey through it all?  What a great place to be!  And to start at!  (Sorry about ending that with a preposition.  It just reads better that way, don’t you think?  It is, after all, MY sentence.  I wrote it, and I want a quarter, please, for every time someone uses it.  [Yeah…I stole that from J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-man.])

A Blessing...

May God, our Abba Daddy, bless you, my friends...

May He make the road to rise up and meet you...

May He make the Light of His Countenance to shine upon you...

May the wind be at your back...

And may the rain fall softly about you.

Happy writing...

Bling

BTW…Here’s a fun clip from an old Mad About You episode, where Jamie (Helen Hunt) has been trying to start her own writing project…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TbUP2g6-tw&feature=related

Oh…and I can’t stop listening to this song.  Do you ever do that?  If it were a record, I would have worn a groove in it by now.  Anyway…it’s the inspiration for my blessing above.   God’s peace, y’all...

Abba (Father), Rebecca St.  James
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z36b3bmay-0