7 RESOURCES TO HELP YOU START WRITING YOUR BOOK/STORY WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START
Writing a book or story can be a pain in the “nose” if you don’t know where to start.
If you often spend more time thinking of what to write than doing the writing itself, then you have a problem, and I’m am going to help you solve it.
In today’s article, you’ll learn about seven different resources you can use to cure writers’ block, so you can start writing seamlessly.
#1 Create a Schedule for Your Writing
Failing to plan is planning to fail. If you fail to plan the date and time of what you want to write, then you’re going to fail to start writing. It’s best to put yourself under pressure to do what you said you were going to do. You’ll be amazed at how your mind starts coming up with great ideas when you have a plan.
Your mind is created to perform at a very high level when put under pressure. That’s because when there’s something pressurizing you, your brain activates survival mode. This mode was forged hundreds of thousands of years ago in th minds of our ancestors to help them survive the enormous carnivores that lived then.
You don’t have to survive any monster in the physical world today (unless you’re in Africa!), but you have to survive the monster of procastination and lack of clarity in the mental world.
Because your mind is being chased by the fact that you have to start writing and for how long, it’ll have to come up with ideas fast before your time dies out.
Action Step: Create a detailed schedule of when you’ll start writing the book or story and make sure you follow through on your word.
#2 Remove All Distractions
You might not be able to start writing your book or story because of the many distractions that lie in sight.
Distractions are meant to distract you from your goal and you must get rid of them.
Examples of distractions can be:
- Television
- Your mobile phone
- Music
- Pets
- Friends
- Family members
- Noisy neighbors
- House chores
- Incomplete tasks
- Your plans for tomorrow, etc.
Remove anything that makes you think about anything else other than the writing project in front of you.
Writing is a creative activity that needs you to tap into the world of the unknown.
Constantly plugging in and out of your creative juices will lead you to not know what to write.
The best exercise you can do to help keep you focused is mindfulness meditation. Simply close your eyes, breath in deeply, and out slowly. Continue doing that whilst concentrating on the breeze coming in and out of your nose. If anything pulls your focus away, bring it back to your breath and you’ll start seeing your concentration levels going up. That’ll lead you to know where to start your writing.
Action step: Complete all important tasks you need to complete for the day. Find a quiet spot, whether your bedroom, office, backyard or the park. Sit down, and start writing.
#3 Read Some Short Stories
If you scheduled your writing and removed all distractions, but still can’t start writing your book or story, your next step is to inspire your creativity by reading some short stories related to what you want to write.
- Take notice of the way the shot stories started, progressed, and ended.
- Notice how the writer used analogies and similies to spice up the story.
- And finally take note of the setting, characters, structure, and form the writer used in the story.
Reading short stories can open up floodgates of creative juices to overflow in your brain which will cause you to be at ease when you want to start writing.
Action Step: Find some short story collections and start drinking upon what already exists. Read and start your project.
#4 Write the Title
The first words you should be typing are the title of your story or book or else you’ll never start writing. Whether you’ll end up using the chosen title at the end of your project or it’s just a placeholder, you must have it as your north star.
If after you finish your project and the title doesn’t seem to align with what you were trying to portray in your story, alter it.
Starting by writing your title helps bring forth ideas into your imagination, hence making it easy for you to come up with an amazing story.
Action Step: Write any title that aligns with what you want to write. You’ll change it at the end of the writing process if you feel that it’s just not right.
#5 Create an Outline for Your Book or Story
After writing down your title, you have to move on to write a detailed outline for your story or book. An outline consists of anything you think you’ll want to include in your project.
Action Step: Use the following four steps to create your outline:
- Brainstorm – Note down any thought or idea you want in your project by making a mind-map.
- Organize – Put your ideas into chronological order.
- Re-organize – After you finish putting your thoughts in order, look for what looks like is out of place and re-order it, putting everything into sub-sections.
- Label – Create headings and sub-headings that you’ll want to have in your story or book.
After creating an outline, you’ll find that your brain knows what to write because you have a clear plan in place.
#6 Start Writing Until You Finish the Story or Book
The best advice you can ever get about writing is to start writing anything. Whether you hate what you’re writing or not, just continue. There is a tool called “The Most Dangerous Writing App” which I would advise you to start using to write, though you must use it with caution.
This tool is dangerous in the sense that it allows you to write your story or book seamlessly, but if you stop writing, it deletes everything you wrote. This puts you under pressure to pump out some words onto writing.
People often don’t know what to write because they overthink their story which makes their stories all complicated.
One thing most people don’t understand is that you have the most powerful form of computer in your head. Any task you put upon it, it can easily do unless you stop it.
