Have you started writing this year? Or are you continuing what you were writing in 2008?

More often than not there’s a but when people tell me they want to write.  But I don’t know where to begin, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have writing skills, but I’d be embarrassed it somebody read about my private thoughts, but I’m afraid to send my work out – etc. It’s all blah, blah, blah. No one, or very few of us, knows where to begin – you just start writing and then you find the beginning later.  No one ever finds enough time (you make it), and I’m still not clear on what these “writing skills” are that keep so many people from writing. And of course we’re all embarrassed about putting our personal lives and private thoughts out there in public but we do it anyway, and we’re all scared to death when we send our work out (those who aren’t scared may be a wee bit unbearably smug.) 

If you’re having trouble starting to write, or stuck in something you’ve started – turn off the news or whatever you watch on tv, or hide your Blackberry or get up fifteen minutes earlier or go to sleep later, or take a shorter lunch – whatever it takes, and write for fifteen minutes a day this week. Every day!  If your head and heart feel empty, simply look out the window and write what you see.

Write about what bugged you in the paper this morning, or what the weather is doing. As I write this if you’re in Europe or the mid-west or northeast of the U.S. you’re  freezing to death – write down those details of how cold it is, how annoying and disruptive the cold can be, what you have to wear when you go outside. Or how cozy it is staying inside. If you’re in Southern California right now you’re in a glorious heat wave. (I just sat outside in the garden and wrote pages in my journal about this gift of weather in Los Angeles and that only yesterday I was up in Lake Arrowhead – an hour and forty minutes from here – shoveling snow off my deck.)  Weather and what it does to people (and fictional characters) is really interesting. Pay attention to it.

And that’s the secret to starting to write. Pay attention. The world is fascinating. Take notes.