10 Ways to Start the Writing Process When Youre Staring at a Blank Page
Louis L'Amour is attributed as saying, \u201cStart writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.\u201d1\n\n\n\nSounds easy enough, but a lot of times we can\u2019t even find the faucet. Or we find the faucet but fail to turn it on.\n\n\n\nEither way, we want to write, but no words flow.\n\n\n\nIs that you?\n\n\n\nAre you ready to begin writing but you don\u2019t know where to start\u2014you don\u2019t know how to get the words to flow?\n\n\n\nI\u2019ve got 10 options for you\u2014ten faucets, if you will. I\u2019ll bet one stands out more than the rest.\n\n\n\nPick one. Try it. \n\n\n\nSee if it gets those words flowing.\n\n\n\n1. Start with a memory \n\n\n\nThink back to an event that seems small yet feels packed with emotion. You don\u2019t have to fully understand it. Just remember it. Something changed due to that event. The change may have been subtle or seismic, but you emerged from it a different person.\xa0\n\n\n\nThe simple prompt \u201cI remember\u201d can get you started. Use it as a journal entry and see where it takes you, or go ahead and start writing something more substantial.\n\n\n\nWhen you remember and recreate these scenes from your past, you\u2019ll learn from them. I experienced this when I wrote a short scene in this style, called One Lone Duck Egg. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2. Start with a photo\n\n\n\nPhotos can whisk us back to another place and time, whether as recently as last week or as long ago as childhood.\n\n\n\nPull a photo from your collection of family photos, physical or digital.\xa0\n\n\n\nWrite in response to the scene. Recreate it. Let the memories unfold.\xa0\n\n\n\nYou could be in the photo, or not.\xa0\n\n\n\nYou could write the story behind the moment, or elaborate on a particular person in the scene.\xa0\n\n\n\n\nWhat do you think was happening?\xa0\n\n\n\nWhy were you\u2014or weren\u2019t you\u2014there?\xa0\n\n\n\nWhat does this say to you today?\n\n\n\n\nAnother approach is to combine words with images to create a photo essay.\xa0\n\n\n\nBack in 2011, I walked around the farm where I grew up and snapped photos. Each time, a fragment of thought came to mind, a flash of a memory.\xa0\n\n\n\nWhen I got home, I pieced it together to come up with Dancing in the Loft.\n\n\n\n3. Start with art\n\n\n\nArt ignites imagination. Whether you invent a story behind the piece of art you choose, or you document your response to it, you\u2019ll end up with an interesting project.\xa0\n\n\n\nOne of my creative writing professors in college gave us a similar assignment to write poetry from art. It\u2019s possible she was trying to introduce us to ekphrastic poetry,2 which, according to the Lantern Review Blog,3 is \u201cwritten in conversation with a work(s) of visual art.\u201d\xa0\n\n\n\nBut she took a less formal approach, asking us to find some art, study it carefully, and write a poem.\n\n\n\nI used a small, framed print of an Andrew Wyeth painting as inspiration.\n\n\n\nI studied the boy sitting in the grass and imagined a possible scenario leading up to the moment Wyeth captured. As I was finishing the poem and typing it up, I realized I needed to include information about Wyeth\u2019s work. I turned the frame around and fortunately I found the date and name of the painting. Wyeth named it \u201cFaraway,\u201d4 and I coincidentally called my poem "Runaway.\u201d5\n\n\n\nSpend time with the art and see where it leads.\n\n\n\n4. Start with an object\n\n\n\nI once wrote about an old, worn knob that topped the post at the bottom of our stairs.\xa0\n\n\n\nI loved the worn knob for being worn. All the stain was rubbed off one side of it from the years before we owned the house. Like the previous owners, we swooshed around that newel post, running our palms around the knob every single time we ran up or down the stairs.\xa0\n\n\n\nWhen we decided to replace the railing, I begged our carpenter\u2014who is also a friend of ours\u2014to save the knob.\n\n\n\nHe did.\n\n\n\nAnd I wrote about it.\n\n\n\nAnother time I wrote about a precious soapstone vase I played with as a child. The consequences of that day of play lasted a long, long time. \n\n\n\nMy friend and coauthor Charity Singleton Craig uses objects (and places) to launch a \u201cchain of remembrance.