A professional writer is an amateur who did not quit
The hardest thing to do as a writer is to get the first page done. You don’t believe it? Well, try it for yourself. I’m no Charles Dickens, but you’re about to read a classic novel’s worth of words in this page.
Writing about anything seems like a vague notion on the outside, but just like an onion, when you peel off more layers, you find the exact same thing every single time; and you start crying!
Now if you have a spontaneous tendency to become an inanimate object when you know you should be doing productive things, here is what’s going to happen. You will try and try… and try again, and subsequently (read: unsurprisingly), fail to achieve your goals often (if not always).
Why?
If Einstein defined doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result as ‘madness’, most of the time, the way we take a shot at things echoes the definition of madness.
So yes, there is a dire need for us to start reconstructing our approach towards most of the things we do (or perceive). And writing is no exception!
As a writer, one of the most common things that I’ve noticed in people (including myself) is that, we keep telling ourselves “Ok, I gotta start writing” but we fail to act on it. Some of us think that writing is for professionals and perhaps, we should get some kind of certification to ensure that we don’t repeat the ‘Gun Powder Plot’ or end up being an epic fail.
As a matter of fact, writing is like sex; you don’t have to wait until you’re an expert to begin doing it.
There is just one more thing! If you are waiting for the right topics or motivation to start writing, um… that’s not really important. Yes, motivation, people, medium, and plot matters, but what matters more is that you get started. As long as you do what you need to do, the medium of doing it comes secondary!
So yes, once you set the ground rules, go ahead and hunt for your story. And when you do so, remember that every story has an introduction, narrative, argument, refutation and a conclusion. It’s a journey that you take rather than just the recitation of facts and figures.
