Just begin...

So today I finally forced myself to sit still and write the first few pages of book II in my Young Adult (teen) dystopian series. I've been fiddling about and procrastinating and calling it plotting and thinking, but the time had come to put pen to paper. Literally! I find it much easier to slip into writing with a notebook (lined on the right, blank on the left) and a coloured felt-tip marker - what we on this side of the pond call a koki. Somehow it's not as intimidating as a blank screen with its mockingly winking cursor!

It's an act of such faith to sit down, pick up a pen and begin to write a book. You just assume it will come - the muse will descend, the characters will show you their story and you will take dictation. Every single time, I freak out. What is the muse is off eating baklava on Mount Olympus? What if the characters are sulking or AWOL, what if I have no more talent, no more stories, no more words? Gah! 

Then I make myself pick up my koki - preferably a green or purple one - and tell myself to write just 1000 words. I give myself permission for them to be utter crud. And I start...

And every time, it just comes. And before I know it, I'm in the flow of the story with more ideas starting to buzz and pop inside me.

The best writing advice I ever got was from my grade 11 English teacher, Sally-Anne Kok, who always said, as we stared, paralyzed, at the blank sheet in front of us with not an idea of what to write, "JUST BEGIN!" It's as true now as it was then, and as true for most of life's worthy enterprises as it is for writing.

Just begin.