Getting Started

The blank page.

Those have to be the most beautiful -- and scariest -- three words in the writer's lexicon. Depending upon my mood, the blank page can be anything from a delectable expanse ready for creation to a very smooth, slippery wall of hard plastic that will not take ink no matter how hard I try.

Luckily, there are ways around the latter. Here are a few of my favourites (in random order, because I'm a random kind of gal):
a. Pick a colour. Write from the colour.
b. Snatch up a book like Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer's Life by Bonni Goldberg. Find it here. It's stuffed from cover to cover with writing starters. Another of my faves is Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg. Find it here. (Why are they both Goldbergs? Is there a genetic predisposition to inspiring writers?)
c. Take the words out of someone else's mouth. Open a book you haven't read to a random page. Write down the first line. Then continue. You can start with this one: "It was even more money than he had delivered the time before." (Daughter of War, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, p. 56. Get it here.)
d. Take the words out of someone else's mouth, part two. Sit down in a coffee shop and write down the first sentence you hear. (Be sly about this one.)

Now, go fill a page!