063: 4 Tips to Start Writing Your Book
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4 tips to start writing your book
Hi, friends. This week's episode is sort of a companion to last week's episode, which was five things to do before writing your novel, and this is like tips for starting your novel. Okay, so you've done all that prep work, you've made some decisions about tense and point of view and things about your book that are important to decide before you dive in, right? You're set on those things, you're like, Okay, I've got it, I've got a rough idea of what I want to write about doesn't necessarily mean a full on outline, because some writers, as we know, don't like to do the full outlining. They just want to start writing and see where the story goes. But after that point, once you're at that, that point, how do you start? What do you do? How do you actually to make this happen? So that's some tips in this episode for starting your novel, meaning you've done all the prep work, you know where you're going, roughly, anyways, you got a rough idea? How do you actually start?
Okay, my first tip is something called lowering the resistance. Here's what this means. Here's, here's what I mean by lowering resistance. If you are not a morning person, if it is agonizing for you to get out of bed before 8am, but you have to roll out of bed and you you start work, you don't have this long morning routine, you basically just get coffee, brush your teeth and start work for the day, it is going to be very hard to get yourself in the habit of waking up at 6am. To write for an hour, that is going to be hard doesn't mean you can't do it, you can absolutely do it, you can try you can implement all of these hacks and, and motivations and rewards to get yourself into the routine of waking up at six to write your book. But it's going to be a lot harder, there's going to be a lot of resistance and friction that's there. So we're versus true. If you're not a night owl at all, by like 8pm 9pm, your brain is mush, and you're like, nope, but that's that's the only time of day I can do it, I have to block off that hour to write my book, it's going to be hard again, doesn't mean you can't do it. If that is literally the only time in your day when you can write then that might just be have to be when you write.
But why not make it easier for yourself and pick a time of day when you feel a little bit more energized. When you feel refreshed when you feel like you have the mental bandwidth to sit down and write, especially in the beginning, because you're doing a lot of new things. If this is your first book, you're discovering your process, you're discovering how to get the words on the page, you're discovering your own method, and all of this stuff takes a lot of energy at first, then eventually you get into a routine and a rhythm. And you kind of learn how to do it, of course. So it's not as difficult after that point. But it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work in the beginning. So anything that you can do to lessen that work and less than that resistance is going to help you actually start writing. So again, finding the time of day when you feel good when you feel energized, that works with your schedule, setting up some kind of reward system for yourself. Anything that you can do again to just like lower the resistance and the friction to make this happen is going to make you more likely to be successful.
Number two, tip number two is to set a timer when you write. So let's talk through what this will look like when you are opening up your Word document or your Google Docs. Whatever you're writing on and it's blank. You have not yet written anything the blank page is staring at you. That little cursor is blinking and you're like okay, it's go time. I have to actually start with the the first sentence of this book. I suggest setting a timer and I suggest trying 15 minutes to start. Of course you can tweak you can adjust maybe even start with five minutes. Maybe you do 30 minutes, but I think 15 minutes is a solid chunk of time where you can be really focused for 15 minutes, but then after 15 minutes you get to take a break, right, you get to get up from your desk, get a cup of coffee, take a walk, go to the bathroom, whatever you need. So set a timer for 15 minutes. And while that 15 minutes is running like once it once it starts want that, once that timer starts, you are only writing. And this is going to sound weird. If this is the first time you're hearing me talk about this, but you're going to try to write as quickly as you can, you are not worrying about having perfect grammar, you are not worrying about if the sentence is in the right order. You are not worrying about where exactly you're starting, just write whatever that first scene is that you have in your mind that you're going to start with whether that's page one, chapter one, or somewhere down the road, like a different scene later in the book, whatever you're writing, try to write as quickly as you possibly can just get down as much as you can on the page in those 15 minutes.
Again, when the 15 minutes are up, take a break if you want to keep going after that, and you want to do another 15 minutes or maybe you want to do 30 minutes, you can absolutely do that. But the idea of a short sprint why I'm such a fan of short Sprint's is that when that timer is going, you are just writing as quickly as you can, you are making a ton of progress. And even if it's not super quick, and you're just like I don't really know how much I was able to get done in 15 minutes, that's okay. When the timer is running, that's all you're doing, you are only writing you're not doing anything else at all. So maybe this means you need to like minimize distractions, maybe you need to put your computer or your laptop on airplane mode, maybe you need to put your phone out of reach, maybe you need to shut the door, whatever you need to do to like protect that time while the timer is running. Okay. Tip number three is related to that. And I've kind of talked about it already. Do not edit as you go. When you are writing when the timer is going, it does not matter. You don't go back to say like, well, this word, this word that I put here isn't exactly the right word. What else could I put here? Or oh, well, I'm referencing this historical event like does this take place in 1867, or 1852. Or let me do some research to figure out no, none of that you can put a little asterix if you want. Or just make some kind of comment there if it's something that you need to come back to.
But again, when that timer is running, you're not doing research, you're not googling stuff, you're not looking at the dictionary, you are only writing and you are not going back to edit, you just want to push forward. The only exception to this that I? Well, yeah, the only exception to this is right before the timer starts if you want to just read over the page or two before, like what you've written previously, just to refresh your brain about like where you are in the story. Sure, you can do that to go back, but you're not editing, you're just going back to refresh your memory about what you've written. And what's coming up next. That's it. This is my suggestion for the process. I know there are some writers who don't follow this, they like to edit as they go, maybe they write a chapter and then they go back and revise that chapter. Their mindset on this or why they do it is that some days, it's just really hard to write and they just don't have the momentum or the energy to do it. But they can edit, they can work on something that's already been written. And that's fair, that's fair. So maybe you try this process that I'm suggesting and realize it's not for you, that's fine. But I do suggest at least giving this a shot of not editing as you go.
This is going to help you make progress faster, you're going to have a lot more forward momentum, if you're not stopping to go back every time you write to fix word choice or grammar, or something like that, because it's really easy to get caught up in perfectionism. Especially, well, not especially really anytime. But when you're a new writer, you're developing this this muscle of of, you know, not judging, like every single thing that you've written every single word that you've written, and wanting everything to be perfect right out of the gate. And if you don't go back and look at what you've written, there's not this chance to to judge it and to have your inner critic come out and say this is all garbage. I can't believe you wrote this. This is terrible. This is going to be a horrible book that no one's ever going to want to read. Blah, blah, blah, whatever your inner critic, whatever that voice inside you says, If you don't go back, you don't have an opportunity to have those voices come out. So this is just made. I can't tell you the impact that this has had on my writing. It was agonizingly slow for me working on my my first book before I heard this piece of advice to not edit as you go and that changed it really He changed everything for me. And I was able to make so much more progress, get the draft out faster. And it just felt good, it felt a lot better the process of writing my book was more enjoyable.
Yeah, everything was just better. So I really recommend trying that. My fourth tip for starting your novel, okay, I'm kind of jumping around here a little bit, I made a few notes, I created some bullet points for myself. And they're kind of out of order. But fourth tip is right, figure out what your entry point is to the story. And start there, I talked about entry point when it comes to editing. And I think this applies to writing as well. So I talked about, you know, wherever you're going to start, whether that's like chapter one, page one, the very first scene of the story, that's fine, you can start there. Or if you have this idea for a scene that is just so consuming, and you're so excited to write it, maybe it's the climax, maybe it's the resolution, maybe it's like halfway through the book, this important conversation that some characters have, whatever it is, whatever, whatever feels the most energizing and exciting to write. That is your entry point. For me, it has always been chapter one, page one, like, just starting on page one. For me, that's easiest. And it just, yeah, there's not a lot of resistance. Because I often don't have everything figured out yet. In the plot, I'm somewhere in between a plotter and a pantser, which means I don't like to have a structured outline, I don't like to do a ton of outlining. But I also like to have some ideas about what I want the story to be. And for me who the characters are, that's important.
So usually, I have a pretty good idea of how the book starts, what the inciting incident is, which is the thing that sort of kicks off a story somewhere in the first like 10 to 15% of the book, the thing that sets the story in motion, I usually have a good idea of what happens there what those things are. So for me, my entry point is just page one, because I know where things start. But some people like to write out of order, they're not necessarily going through the book chronologically. So again, if you have a scene that you have just been so excited to write, or maybe it was the first moment that came to you, when you were thinking about what to write, and you had an idea for a book, if that's the thing that you're fixated on, start there, just start at whatever the entry point is. And don't worry about how it's all going to fit together yet, like you will wrap you will write the rest of it, you will get there. For now, it's just about starting. And if you are one of those writers where it is really challenging to start, this is going to help if you start with something that you're very excited about that feels the easiest, that feels the most expansive, it's going to be easy for easier for you to actually sit down. And when that timer starts, get the words on the page.
Okay, so those are the tips I have for starting your novel. And I just want to say too, I want to echo something that I said earlier in this episode, which is that when you are doing all of this for the first time, it feels daunting, and it can feel overwhelming for some writers. And I just want to encourage you and say like push past that discomfort and that feeling of being overwhelmed. Because the more that you write, the more that you exercise this muscle, the better you will get at starting things, starting a new project, starting a new scene chapter, whatever it is, like you will have experienced all of these things before. So in some respects, the first page of the first book can sometimes be the hardest part. And it's like once you're through that, once you've got some words on the page, and you realize like holy shit, I'm doing this, I'm actually writing a book that can be really encouraging and provide a lot of momentum for you. So like with lots of things, it just gets easier, the more that you do it, you just have to get over that initial hurdle of of getting the words on the page. And remember, if that voice of judgment or that inner critic comes out, no one is reading this. In fact, I highly, highly, highly recommend not letting anyone read these early pages. Even if you're like I'm so excited. I just want to share them. Wait until you've done a little bit of polishing and editing. That's my suggestion. So no one's gonna see them. It doesn't matter if they're kind of chaotic or you're still figuring out what the story is like. That's okay. Give yourself permission to just let it be messy. That's okay.