Getting Started and Filling the Blank Page
Transforming those nebulous concepts and pieces of information floating in your head into words and sentences that pervade your first page is one of the most personal processes there are. What works for one person will be counterproductive for someone else.
Nonetheless, there are some factors everyone should consider:
Determine a time of day or night when you are usually prolific.
Select a place that is conducive for you to write, keeping in mind where you are physically comfortable and not subject to interruptions.
Make sure the tools of your trade are working and are at your fingertips, such as computer, pens and paper, reference materials, and so forth.
Keep distractions at bay by turning off your phone and letting people know you do not want to be disturbed.
Don't stare too long at that blank screen or sheet of paper; if need be, get up and do something else, letting you mind work in the background.
Take the Leap
Ultimately, you have to throw caution to the wind and just write. We all have built in censors that keep saying this won't work and that's too awful to put into print. This is not to say that editing and rewriting is not critical to the writing process, because it is. But at some point, you just have to get started and ignore the editor in the back of your head.
“To write is to plumb the unfathomable depths of being. Writing lies within the domain of mystery. The space between two words is vaster than the distance between heaven and earth. To bridge it you must close your eyes and leap. Ultimately, to write is an act of faith.” — Elie Wiesel from Memoirs
What will make it easier for you to take the leap and put the first words down on paper is to remember that they are just that — the first words of your first draft. They are not cast in stone and need not be perfect. They can — and likely will — be changed. In fact, very often the first beginning is excised from the final draft altogether. As long as it gets you started, it will have served you well. So, don't sweat your first beginning.
However, your “final” beginning is crucial and must grab the reader and make her want to read further. This is of utmost importance when it comes to shopping your work to editors and agents, as you will see in Chapter 22. To give you an idea, here are several beginnings for you to consider, although keep in mind what does and doesn't work is highly subjective.
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” (The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka)
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy)
“He was called to the Torah, and before reciting the blessing he reached into his tallis bag, removed the silencer, aimed it at his temple, and pulled the trigger.” (The Golems of Gotham by Thane Rosenbaum)
“Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this “landowner” — for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate — was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless.” (The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky)
“Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right.” (Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates)
“Khrushchev was in power, or we thought he was, that month I spent as cultural ambassador and banjo-picking bridge between the superpowers, helping to stave off nuclear holocaust.” (Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War by John Updike)
“There are two good things about living in a basement apartment. The first is that you can't kill yourself by jumping out the window.” (Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned by Kinky Friedman).
Perhaps one or more of these beginnings have inspired you to achieve similar heights. Or, you are convinced more than ever that you might as well make the attempt because you can't do any worse than what has been written by others. In any event, give it a try. Without thinking for more than a minute, write a sentence or two as a beginning giving no thought to what may follow. Just do it. Now, put it away for another day. Maybe it will lead to something and maybe it will not, but even if it doesn't, remember this: You survived and are little the worse for wear for having written it. Just take that leap!
What Type of Writer Are You?
Just like most personality traits, there seems to be two types of writers — probably having to do with right-brain or left-brain dominance. There is the organized, meticulous, and disciplined writer and when you walk into his writer's garret, everything is in place, structured, and laid out for efficiency. We'll call this person Type A. Then there is Type B who is always full of ideas, whose mind wanders in all directions with different ways to turn a phrase, and when you walk into her writer's garret, it is strewn with books, papers, note cards, half-open bags of snack foods, and the computer is unplugged.
Naturally, you may fit somewhere in between and exhibit some traits of Type A and Type B but probably, one disposition dominates. The thing to remember is that neither temperament is better than the other. It's just a question of making adjustments so you can write and be productive.
If you are Type A, the toughest challenge you may face is coming up with ideas, so maybe what you need to do is leave your workplace and get out and about with nothing to do other than relax and be open to your surroundings. Let your mind flow. If you're Type B, ideas are not the problem. It's more likely that keeping track of them is the hard part, so having a small notebook handy to jot them down will be useful. When you get home, transfer the ideas to cards and a poster board or organize them on your computer.
The way you write will also reflect the type of writer you are. You may write page after page for hours without looking back or you may dwell on each word and sentence until it reaches perfection. But regardless of the style you employ, as you will see in the following, rewriting is at the heart of good writing.
“Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right just before they go on to the next one. When they're done they're done. I am a basher.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
