The best truth I know about getting started
Hello one-who-longs-to-write.
I think a lot about how to get started writing. So often, it feels excruciating. If you love writing, you know that feeling of going, of being in the middle. But how do you get past the soaring wall that seems to soar up around the first couple paragraphs?
Today, for example… It’s Monday. My back aches. I’m trying to lay low on caffeine because #anxiety, but I’d love that lift. The last thing I want to do is find something smart to say in a newsletter. I want to watch TV in bed. Or under bed. I want to be warm and invisible.
And, simple as it is, this moment may hold the best truth I know about getting started — you just friggin’ do it. Our new season of workshops launch tomorrow (today when you’re reading this) and I love these classes. I love this work. I can’t send out a blank email. So here I am. Going.
I’ve learned a lot about this from running Coffee Sessions. This morning when we finished, someone shared in the chat, “I’m always amazed what can come in 20 minutes.” It’s true. Every time, at the end, I’m in a new place. Language changes the air in a room. Writing starts us on one place, and lands us somewhere new.
If you’d told me 3 years ago that part of my job would be to give a big group of people a writing prompt via my webcam and then sit and write for 20 minutes and write, I’d never have believed you. But those 20 minutes are some of the most sacred of my week.
We stop thinking about writing.
We stop planning to write.
We just do it.
So! Hi. 👋 I did it.
I remember a weird story I heard as a kid about a man who ate a car.
The story went that he ground up a tiny bit of it every day, mixing it into orange juice and swallowing it down.
To be clear, I am not advocating for this and I have no idea if the story is real, but I can still feel the grip of wonder it gave me.
I just knew then — you can do all kinds of weird and beautiful things in this life. You just need to want to, to find a way, and to start.
In it with you,
