Starting is the hardest part

I think there's a lot of information out there on the internet that can be really intimadating when one thinks about getting into the world of writing. What if I don't know enough? What do I need to write a good story? Where do I even start?

Well, I'm here to impart some learned wisdom.

All you need is an idea.

That's it.

One little idea, and maybe the will to actually write it.

I wrote my first book almost three years ago now, and I think a big reason that I was able to finish it was because I didn't think that it would go anywhere. I'd been given an idea, one that I knew I wanted to read, and from my failed attempts at writing before I knew I needed an outline.

So, I sat down and I wrote probably the worst outline in the history of book outlines. And then I drafted maybe the worst draft in the history of first drafts. But by the end of that time, I had a book.

I didn't think about where it was going or who would read it or what I wanted my writing career to look like. I just wrote. Because I knew that if I didn't write, it would feel like something was missing.

I didn't have a degree in writing. I hadn't taken courses in story structure or studied the classics. I just wrote.

And here we are, three years later, and I'm almost at the point of being able to query that book to agents. Who knows, maybe it'll flop. But the hardest part was writing those first words on a blank page and I did that. So how hard can the next steps be?

~Erin

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