where to begin

I'm bad with beginnings. I have trouble starting up a new story. I can sustain a tale once it gets rolling, but actually providing the inertia to get things moving, and get them moving properly, is a trial and a tribulation. This debility has plagued me since Day One. Except for academic essays (where all you have to do is tell people what you're going to write about and throw in an interesting hook), writing those first few lines has always frustrated me.

I agonized for years over how to begin my first novel. I must've started at least 40 or 50 times (no exaggeration). Always, I'd get about twenty pages in, look over what I'd written, foam at the mouth at how inane and awkward it was, and tear up the manuscript or delete it violently from my computer. It's only by some miracle that this, the 51st edition, managed to survive the initial purge, the Page Twenty Anxiety Attack. I decided to stick with it. I said, "I'll fix it in the editing. The important thing is just to write the story right now, get it going."

And sure enough, after biting the bullet for the first 40 pages, things picked up. The beginning ended. Act II commenced. Things started to roll, and when I got to the end, what I had was, to my eyes, at least halfway decent. I was readily able to go from there and start revision.

Beginnings have become marginally easier for me in recent months. I've had much better luck with the four short stories that I'm currently working on (well, six; but two of them might turn into novels, if they don't turn out too corny). The introductions to these stories have flowed very easily. Story #3 (which I'll call Cryptozoology) danced off my fingers, dripping menace all over the page, getting me high enough on myself to believe I was the next Lovecraft or Campbell. Story #4 (Airplanes) was a bit more viscous, but it gradually eased itself off the ground, with a goodly amount of foreshadowing and suspense in tow. (Only Story #2, Crunch, worries me—the beginning is about as formulaic and inane as a two-dollar romance novel.)

The only thing I can attribute this to is PRACTICE. Writing is a sport, like soccer (or "football," depending on where you're from). To get good at writing, you must practice it. Practice hard, and practice often. Writing every day is vital. Create a routine, cultivate a special frame of mind for your writing that you can slip in and out of like a pair of broken-in track shoes. Train your fingers to the keyboard, your eyes to the page, your mind to the story. It may seem like work—it may seem like you must take time out of your day to write. Well, yes, you must, if you want to succeed. Nothing about writing is easy. You have to work hard at it. But you'll be able to dive in with less of a warm up, increase your productivity a hundredfold, if you engage in the writing game on a daily basis.

Don't just expose yourself to your own writing, either. Read everything you can get your hands on. And don't just read. Stephen King gave burgeoning writers another good hint in his book, On Writing: get yourself some audio books and listen to those when you're driving to work and back. (Because, King asked, how many times do you need to listen to Deep Purple's "Highway Star"?) This improves your writing in a mechanical sense (giving you an eye and an ear for grammar, syntax, and diction). Your style will be positively influenced as well. Nothing inspires me more than bouncing from one author and one genre to the next—Mark Twain to Jules Verne to Louisa May Alcott to Douglas Adams to Dalton Trumbo—picking up a new word here, a different turn of phrase there, comparing styles and voices and seeing what works for me, crafting my own voice from the information I've gleaned.

And speaking of craft, what could improve your craft more than reading some of the greats'? Constantly seeking to improve your writing is the final tenet of my How to Become a Master Writer Without Breaking the Bank on Self-Help Books or Attending Weak-Kneed Writer's Workshops plan. Always be on the lookout for ways to make your writing better. Sure, self-help books do help, but they're not a cure-all. You shouldn't do like I did and buy a pile of them, sift through them at a snail's pace, and wind up even more daunted about writing and editing than you were before. Writer's workshops can be a godsend, but they're also a crap shoot. It's hit or miss whether you'll find one that will actually be useful. Too often writer's workshops are full of vague, limp-wristed folks who won't give you any solid or specific information about how to improve your work. They'll just say things like "Oh, I liked this part," or "The symbolism was great, particularly that bit with the severed head," or "I don't know, the bit where Miss Pennyfeather yodels through a mouthful of yogurt really sounded great." Very infrequently will you run across a group of writers that will tell you to get down on your belly and give them 50 push-ups for bad writing. "Drop and give me fifty, maggot! Your pacing's all off, your main character is flat and uninteresting, your plot devices are befuddling, and the whole friggin' story is 30,000 words too long! And if you so much as think about writing one more incomprehensible metaphor, I'll punch your plot down your premise, that's if you had either!" (This is definitely what you need.)
But fear not! There's some excellent writing advice to be found all over that thing called the Internet. And it's absolutely free! There's articles, pamphlets, forums, treatises, and essays galore, all over the information superhighway (not to mention—ahem—all the blogs out there). Read 'em. Just digest two or three of 'em per day. Chances are good that there will always be something in there you can use in your writing, perhaps that very same day. Feeling down, hung up, stuck, blocked, hemmed in, trapped, or defeated by your work-in-progress? Type your problem into Google (or Bing, if you're a sucker for punishment)! Look it up! Writing's been around for thousands of years. You're not the first person to have a problem with it. Thousands, perhaps millions of others have had similar problems, and the odds are that one or two of them decided to write a helpful article about it.

In conclusion (this is starting to sound like an essay, isn't it?), all you need to do to improve your writing and get comfortable in the saddle is remember the three R's: readin', (w)ritin' and research. Practice your art, read that of others, and research the tips and tricks of the trade. In case you're wondering, I wrote this post in less than an hour on a quiet Sunday morning. Where'd I get the inspiration, you ask? Good question. I originally sat down to commence relating my adventures in the U.K. and Ireland to you. But—who'd a' thunk it? I didn't know where to begin.