What? Me Write?

I see you standing there, hands on hips and eyes pinched together. “Listen,” you say. “I read your last post and nothing’s happened. I’ve been talking up my vision like crazy and no scribe has popped up to my rescue.”

I peek at you over the top of my glasses. “You’re honestly telling me one week constitutes giving it your best shot?”

“No. No,” you say. “I was nagging my writerly friends about helping long before I read your piece.”

“In that case,” I say, shoving my glasses back up my nose, “let’s consider the possibility God actually wants you to do the writing.”

Before you can take off screaming, I grab your sleeve and pull you into a chair. Let’s just think this through.

Get Started

I doubt the problem is you’re physically incapable of using a pen or keyboard. Most of us manage to author an email or two. I’ll bet you can even send a text with your thumbs. You may have even used voice recognition software to make a device type for you.

What’s probably intimidating you is that dreaded blank page. In my opinion, the toughest thing about writing is getting started. And the hardest part of starting is deciding where to begin.

I can know clearly what I want to say, but sharing my vision with someone else is like trying to describe a jigsaw puzzle. Should I lay out the edge pieces first and lead my reader inward or assemble a few interior images and build out from there? Spending too much time trying to figure out how to proceed simply ends with procrastination.

What’s important isn’t where we begin but that we begin.

Write in Pieces

So. How to start?

As you pray about your writing project (you are praying about this, right?) notice what part of your message seems to foremost in your heart. Are you mulling over the final words you want to leave with your reader? Is a particular event from your past begging for your attention? Did you just come up with a clever anecdote that would fit with your message? Let that idea be your writing assignment for today.

Though it seems to be taking you out of order, follow the fire. Work on the part of your message which seems to be energizing you today.

Let It Be Ugly

This beginning phase rarely produces beautiful prose, but don’t let that bother you. Your thoughts are coming into the light of day where you can see better what to do with them. Your objective at this stage is simply to download what’s in you. Tell grammar to take a hike. Turn off your spell-check off and just write.

It probably looks like a mess right now, but remember God’s after more than product in this undertaking. The very process of writing stirs us in ways we don’t always understand.

So, let it be ugly. Let it be disorderly. But let it come out.

I’m cheering for you. You’ve made a start!