Today I’m going to talk about how to start writing or, how to get started writing again if you’ve tried it before.
Most people I know have used writing at some point in their life to express themselves. And yet somehow, somewhere in our lives we stopped. Or, you may never have tried to write – yet – and would like to give it a go. 

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be something monumental or life-changing to get started. Thanks to universal education most of us know how to write. And it’s one of the easiest habits to develop. All you need is pen, paper, or a keyboard of some sort. We’re creatures of habit, and habit is one of the most powerful behaviors we have at our disposal. This can be used very effectively, and very quickly, to develop a habit of writing.

What I’ve found with writing is that it’s not something you can multi-task or jam into a busy schedule.
Although it’s simple to do, it’s not any easier to get going effectively than any other good practice or habit in your life. My life is littered with good intentions and resolutions about exercise, diet, and what have you.
I’m part of the 93% - according to some studies - that make New Year’s resolutions in January and don’t follow through. In the enthusiasm of a new beginning I usually plan to do too much, too often. Or I plan to spend too much time on the new thing. Then when I can’t keep it going, I lose interest quite quickly. 

I’ve had many false dawns on my way to developing what I now feel is a successful habit of doing my writing exercise. The steps that have worked, and continue working, for me are:

First, decide on a place to write. Or places. I actually have two – one inside and one outside. This place needs to be private in the sense of somewhere you’re not going to be disturbed. And it needs to be a place you like, that you enjoy, that you like being in, where you’re comfortable just sitting and being there, while the next impulse germinates. I’ve developed an affection for what I now call MY WRITING PLACES - in capitals in my mind - which may not have happened if I hadn’t spent time picking spots I favored. Another reason the place is important for developing a writing habit is that you’ll begin to associate it with your writing practice automatically and that helps reinforce the habit.
What I’ve found is that the physical and mental spaces start to complement and support each other somehow. The act of going to My Writing Place makes it easier to get started. The fact of being in My Writing Place reminds me why I’m there.

Second, find a time in your day that you can be by yourself, so you can experiment with writing. This needs to be a time you know you can be alone. That’s pretty vital. Your writing needs your focus and attention without distractions. Because I get up early before everyone else, this isn’t a problem for me. You need to try it out and see what works best for you. 
Setting a fixed time to start and practice seems to set an expectation internally that reinforces this as well. and helps me want to keep going back. I wake up in the morning and walk or wander to My Writing Place before I’ve started thinking. And by the time I get there and have started thinking, what I start thinking about is my writing practice.

Third, decide a time period you’re going to spend by yourself so you can practice your writing. I started off with thirty minutes, and have experimented with different longer periods up to an hour. For me, an hour is too long, it starts becoming something other than good, healthy exercise. 

Fourth, decide how often you’re going to practice. How many days? Every day? Every other day? Twice a week? You want to start off with something that’s reasonable and doable now. If you’re anything like me, making a goal to do something every day to start off with, forever (which is what I leap to), is too huge. And I know I’ll never develop the habit if I start at the wrong end. 
I eventually found, after quite a few false starts, that every second day – three times a week with a day off – was doable for me until I got into a regular routine with that. I don’t mean I was successful right from the start. It took me a while to get to that as a routine. Then I experimented with how many days felt good to me and I ended up with six – I still give myself a morning off once a week to have a longer sleep. However, I’ve found that I get so much out of starting the day with my writing practice that I often just wake up and do it every day because of how good it makes me feel.

Finally, you do need to commit yourself to doing it for a fixed period of time. This doesn’t have to be huge – I recommend at least a two-week minimum commitment to start with to see what impact this can have for you.
Whatever you choose, the fixed-period-of-time commitment is crucial because this makes it more than just another good idea or thought you’ve kicked around for a while and are trying out. You’re saying to yourself that this is something important enough for you to commit your time and effort to for this period.

All of this does take time and effort. And you’re creating the habit of a lifetime. I think of it as being slow and deliberate, just like creation.

I want to mention change here. After a couple of weeks or a month of writing practice, your life doesn’t change dramatically. But you should be able to feel a difference between then and when you started.
When you start to feel the benefits writing is giving you, you’ll want to commit to the next period, and so forth. I had to change my thinking about and attitude to change to get to a successful writing practice. I expect change to come quickly and dramatically. Partly that’s because I’m impatient. But, also, I’ve been trained to expect change to come quickly. 

For instance, I watch movies for 90 minutes or 2 hours that cover the entire arc of someone’s life from childhood, to struggles, to eventual success. Or TV shows where over the course of an hour people’s lives are transformed by dramatic events. And there’s a mountain of stuff out there promising to change my life in 30, 60, or 90 days. 6 months at the most.

Well, in my experience, real life doesn’t happen like that. At least my real life doesn’t. What I have found is that if I can sustain a small effort over a longer amount of time, it has a cumulative effect that can change my life. So, while I don’t see a dramatic difference in a month of writing, I do feel something of a change. It won’t be huge but it’s enough of a straw in the wind for me to keep going and keep going back. And, in fact, that’s what I did, and do, and what worked, and continues working, for me.

So, now you’ve found your writing place, you know when you’re going there, and for how long, and you’ve made a commitment to do this for whatever period you’ve chosen. Now you need to write. On your first day, as you will on all subsequent days, you sit there in front of your blank paper or screen. It’s an awesome, sometimes awful moment. I find it best not to think too much at this point – I try to plunge in and trust to the process before thinking too much, or before thinking at all. I call it my first leap of faith for the day. Here are some of the things I do to get started – you’ll find your own methods and rhythm as you go along. 

Often, I’ll start writing about what I’m seeing, hearing, touching, being touched by, literally, in that moment. Or, if I find I’m thinking about something that happened yesterday or earlier in the week, I start writing a description and follow where it goes. Usually I start with questions like – What happened? And then what? What was it like then? How would I want it to be now? These help me to get my thinking and writing going, or to move my thinking from the spot it started in. 

Or if I’m replaying some incident that happened with another person, I may decide to follow that with questions like - What do I know about it now? How does it look to me now? How do I feel about it now? What was my part in this? Often a memory of something will come along and I just go with it. These are usually hugely satisfying sessions because pretty much every time I follow a memory, I discover far more memories about it than I knew I had. They keep building on each other.

To give you an idea of how straightforward and simple writing can be, I’ve kept this example of part of what I wrote this morning as I sat outside in My Writing Place while the sun rose:

The garden is all fresh again, renewed, ready to start again, cleansed, untouched, pristine for a few brief minutes, peaceful. It makes me feel like that. Early in the morning, like this, when I rise with enough time to contemplate the garden unhurriedly, I’ve a chance to take it in before I’m split apart, splintered by the demands of each day. Depending on the time of year the new day comes into the garden differently – the greens and grays of autumn as rain once again arrives, the icy rigidity of winter nights easing up with the rising sun, the mist rising diaphanously in spring, and today the shadows and fingers of summer spreading over the garden.

Normally I’d never save a bit of writing like that, much less share it - that’s not the point. That’s not why I write. For me the value of this is that I’ve started my day well. My thinking is more engaged than it would’ve been. And I feel better. For me it’s starting the day by exercising my mind - the equivalent of getting my blood and breathing moving and working better after a walk, or run, or some kind of physical exercise.

As I re-read this, I smile a bit at some of the vocabulary and phrasing. And I feel a certain delight at having been able to produce this impression of today for myself. I feel again the peace it gave me at the start of the day. The thing that comes back to me most now is the experience, the perspective it gave me. I started this day feeling good about it, about the way I had started it, and about myself at the start of this day.

And as I re-read it, I remembered that I’m naturally creative, that we’re all naturally creative. We’re all born like that. It’s part of who we are. And, this creative drive doesn’t go away even if you haven’t tapped into that side of yourself for a while, maybe since childhood. Or, you may never have tapped into that side of yourself – yet! Writing is a way I’ve found to discover, to re-discover, to let out that creative urge. And, you’ve nothing to lose by trying it out. And you definitely have something to gain. No effort is ever wasted in this regard. Even if you find writing isn’t for you, you’ve taken a step on the road to discovering what is the way for you to exercise your mind, to express your creativity.

In my experience, to start writing, you don’t need a teacher, you don’t need creative writing classes, you don’t need to have read the great Canon of literature, or to understand rules of grammar. What you do need to have trust - trust in yourself, to start the process in the first place. And you need to have faith - in the wonder and value of yourself and your own amazing life. And, equally importantly, you need to be willing to take the next step and the next step and the next step towards exploration and discovery. 

But mostly, for me, writing is a way to start every day with a feeling of belonging, of being part of the world. I’m simply there in the world in that place at that moment and I write about being there in that wonderful moment. As I sit in the garden, early in the morning, waking up, and watching the world wake up – this is my nature - in Nature. Remembering that feeling helps me to get started on, and look forward to, my practice of writing.

So that’s this week’s show. Thanks so much for listening if you go this far. 

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Again, thanks for listening, and until next week, take care and get going with your writing!