When Am I Ready To Start Writing?

I had originally planned for this next blog post to be related to one of the many writing guides I’ve used over the years. Moral premise, character arcs, the Snowflake method. All incredible guides that have offered me great insight into how to be a better novelist. But this title seemed to draw me in as I wrote it down in my reflection book. 

Another day I’ll dive into the great writing guides, but today I’d like to explore my great dilemma. How do you know you’re ready to write? 

This isn’t a big deal for punster’s, perhaps. I’m sure you’ve already started writing. But have you considered when to stop? 

Ha, don’t worry; you shouldn’t ever stop writing. When you’re in the flow, it’s always good to keep going. Best to edit than to have no material to edit. I should have more posts for you punsters soon regarding that process. 

The Fear of Not Being Ready Enough

My topic for today is for my plotters and plantsers, for the folks that need some sort of outline to work with or at least an idea to get going in the right direction. But how do you know you’re truly ready to put words down on the page? How do you know you won’t get stuck along the way because you didn’t flesh something out enough? 

That’s the idea lodged in my mind today. I’ve been working on a certain novel that I’ve been working on for years. I’ve created outlines, written drafts and then trashed them because they failed to work.

I feel I do need to acknowledge that those drafts weren’t, in fact, trash. They were blueprints, foundational building blocks. I might have needed to exchange some bricks or rebuild the concrete, but the sole way to know failure was to attempt construction. 

That’s novel writing for you. You’ve sometimes got to strip the paint and try again. 

Or worse, you’ll never get to paint at all. 

Do I think there’re ways to combat the issue so you’re not stripping a hundred strokes of paint? 

Absolutely. 

But an attempt has to be made. Or you’re never going to get that house built. 

But enough of house-building metaphors. Let’s get to the real deal. 

You Can’t Master Every Detail Before You Begin

You will find a hundred ways to avoid it, because I know I have. 

You’ll say, oh, I need to flesh out this character, or I need to set up that setting, or this plot line has holes in it. You’ll have a long list of to dos towards building your world, and as soon as you finish that list you’ll start writing. 

Don’t worry, I have a list too… 

But that’s the problem. Think about our own world; we have thousands of animal species, vast histories, different continents, ecosystems, solar systems. And each of the areas has a specialist designated to study it. 

You are trying to be a specialist in every aspect of your novel’s world. 

See what I’m getting at here. You’re kind of doing the impossible. It’s not impossible, but it’s definitely going to take you a long while to get it done. Even if you’re a plantster, I bet you’re still trying to understand some aspect of your novel before you write. 

And this is when I suggest we take a page out of our punster books. 

Exploration Over Perfection

Sometimes it’s not about knowing; it’s about exploring. Going into the void, searching for solutions. You can always backtrack, change direction, or just choose another path altogether. But, you’ve got to get going. 

Have a map. Yes. Sure. 

And this is where the guides I use come into play, and soon I’ll go into more detail. But cherry-pick your attempts at having the facts. 

Tools That Help You Begin

Understand the moral premise of your story. 

Identify the vague character arc of each of your main characters. What are the lies that they believe? What do they actually need to grow and change? 

And finally, write a synopsis. 

One sentence. 

Then one paragraph

Then five paragraphs for each disaster. 

Then a full page. 

I really believe if you can do at least that, then you’re ready enough to get going. 

Venturing Into the Unknown Again and Again

The moral premise is your compass, the character arcs are your supplies, and the synopsis is a general map of what you might come across. 

But it’s your job to mark the route you make along the way.

Along your journey, make notes. When you get back, review them, and then go venture into another unknown. Again, and again, and again until you can see the complete map. 

The process might take a couple of months, or a could take years, and that’s okay. You nor I can really tell how long the journey might take; that’s up to the novel itself that wedged itself into your brain. 

But it’s chosen you, and you’ve got to get it out there. 

So polish your compass, gather your gear, unroll your map. 

And start writing.

Novel Brainstorming Tips: From Random Ideas to Story Gold

The Reality of Brainstorming

The reality of brainstorming is that it is rarely a structured activity, which can often be the most frustrating part of it. How does one come up with ideas? How do we then organize them into a coherent piece of work? To begin with, you don’t. I promise you, the harder you try to force things into neat little boxes, the further they will get away from you. Ideas are free flowing, little snippets of grand thoughts that need to be saved and collected wherever they lay.

Capturing Ideas Immediately

You may have various notes on your phone, or a Google Docs page, or a little physical notebook. But my recommendation is that the moment something comes to mind, do your very best to get it down immediately! We have too many things to remember in our daily lives as it is, so writing something down the moment it enters makes sure you save it for later. You’re a writer, remember! And as a writer, you’ve always got to be prepared for an idea to come to you. Whether in the shower or at work, a lot of times my ideas come to me as I’m driving, and I have a widget on my phone that I can quickly click to voice record an idea. Safely of course!

Passive Brainstorming

We’ll call all of this passive brainstorming, noting thoughts and ideas as they come to us randomly and spontaneously. Please note! Just because ideas may not come to you via this method does not mean you have none! There are certain things that may block those creative pathways. Stressful times, exhaustion, busy days, and that’s totally okay! Please be patient with yourself, and hence I will go forth and give you some other ways of helping those ideas along when you’re stuck.

Active Brainstorming: Daydreaming Proactively

So, let’s move on to active brainstorming, or active daydreaming as I like to call it. Still unstructured, but we’re going to be a bit more proactive in gathering ideas for our novel. This was something I did a lot growing up and was probably the main reason I sometimes didn’t pay attention in class. I was daydreaming. Maybe don’t follow in my steps, make sure you focus in class, or work! However, you could proactively daydream for a few minutes, such as while showering, driving, or eating.

Using the Big Three: Plot, Character, Setting

I use the big three to get me started: Plot, character, or setting. I know for sure you have at least stemmed the idea for your novel from one of those, and I want you to pursue actively thinking about it. Is there a type of music that fits with it? Play that in the background! Does your character have a certain passion, like cooking or jogging? Go do it! Maybe you have an image in your head, try to find it on Pinterest. What we’re doing is slowly feeding our mind possibilities surrounding our novel, filling it up with inspiration to help churn into various ideas.

Small but Consistent Progress

Once again, don’t rush this process. Even if the most you can do is take five minutes out of your day to daydream about your novel, scribble down a few thoughts, that is totally fine and good! Small but consistent progress is what’s important here.

Organizing Your Thoughts

Now we will move on to organizing your thoughts, finally something with a bit more structure to it! Think of it this way: you’ve collected all the puzzle pieces so you wouldn’t lose them, now we’re going to figure out what area of the puzzle board they might go in. You’re not trying to start working on the puzzle just yet, though! This is the key to avoiding frustration. We’re just allocating them into the spots where we think they might fit.

Pick your medium of choice first. Tabs on your Google Doc, flashcards, a mind map, whatever you prefer. Then start with your big three. What ideas are a part of plot, character, or the setting? Don’t worry if it fits into more than one, put it into the section it most closely aligns with and make a note. Then start branching out.

Example: ‘My character has green eyes.’ Are they sharp and angular? Are they soft, round, and innocent? How does it relate to their personality? Did they get them from their mother? What was she like? What type of relationship did they have? See how many interesting questions there are to answer just with one simple idea you had in your mind?

Let Ideas Flow

And whatever you do, do not pause to edit! This is not the time to be precise or perfect. Let ideas run over and into each other. Be fluid in letting the thoughts trickle onto the page without rhyme or reason. Good or bad, does it make sense? Doesn’t matter! Options are your friend here, we want all the ways your novel can go. That’s creativity at its finest. Be as wild as you like, because later we’ll sort out the junk from the treasure.

But for right now, this is all treasure!

The Writer’s Burden

Day in and day out, we type away,
No guarantee that thoughts will remain.
We hold onto them with great haste,
Praying that they don’t slip away.

Hoping, dreaming, that one day will be the end,
That we reach resolution with the stories in our heads.
And yet…

A day like that will never come,
As writers are found by characters,
Whose stories wish to be sung.

We swim through their lives in an endless Nile,
Gifted with the pain of needing to tell the world,
Or we are left to ache, knowing the truth,
As the stories bunch up in our guts and puke.

So we must breathe out their feelings,
Their ambitions and goals.
We must exhale all that they know.

Little do we know,
That the stories we tell,
Are only but the feelings we wish to suppress.
They are only, but the feelings, we wish to suppress.

So write hard.
Write fast.
Life will not last.
But our characters will find eternity in our words,
And that is how our feelings finally voyage into the world.

What If I Wasn’t A Writer?

I often wonder what life would like without the stories we tell. How I might’ve lived without that unbearable itch inside me. The type of pain that eats away at me the moment I spend too much time away from the page.

Would I be happier? More at peace?

Would I miss the chaos? The spontaneous ideas that come to me without question for time or reason?

I don’t think we choose to be writers, I think the writing life chooses us. And we either push it aside, numb ourselves to its call. Or we succumb to it, like a terrible addiction, never able to fulfill the promise of just ‘one last time’. 

In fact, that is the blessing and the curse of being a writer. The act of writing is both an action that fulfills and yet can just as easily destroy us as any other particular passion.

So choose your poison wisely.

But if you do, you may find reward in all the pain and torment. People question why put yourself through such misery? Why spend hours drafting something that might remain unseen? Why live in your head when there’s a world outside filled with people and things to do?

Because I remember the nights I needed to escape from the world for just an hour. And all it took was novel filled with characters, a world that would never exist, to whisk me away on a journey that gave me hope, anchored me with ambitions, and taught me how to dream.

Stories teach us in ways practical studies cannot. Touch our heart in ways basic entertainment fails too. Hard to describe, I know. I may never find the right words to express it.

But what I can say, is that I want to read my own books one day and find comfort in them, and hope that somebody else can find comfort in them too.

That the characters in my head may have a voice, that my inner child gets to express all what it never got too. Writing stories is just another medium to share our thoughts and experiences, a method of leaving our legacy, a way to forge through our emotions, a piece to represent us long after we’re gone.

Whether for our next of kin, to the world, or just to the infinite cosmos.

I hope you choose to listen to the writer inside you. Or to whatever passion stirs in your heart. Yes, be realistic, yes, try to have a plan. Know that things take time, and hardship is part of the adventure.

But revel in being an optimist, of being called crazy and wild for believing. Trust your gut, have your own back, and know that it’s only impossible if you believe it to be so.

With that in mind… I’ve spent the last ten minutes searching for a meaningful or fulfilling way to conclude this first blog post. 

But starting will always be the scariest part.

So let us just begin.