Welcome back to B is for Book Coach. Today, we’re making space, for beginnings.
Last week, I talked about facing down the topic of our books as we're writing them.
This week, I've stared at a blank screen for far too long, wondering how I should open this episode about how hard it is to find openings.
By this point, we all know how important first lines are.
We know that otherwise good writing lives or dies by its “hook.”
Want to stake your claim in the world of writing advice? Nothing says “Trust me, I'm a writer” like declaring how important beginnings are! as though it's brand new information!
Every book about writing, every listicle about getting your message across, every self-appointed LinkedIn guru makes sure that we know that they know this to be true.
Some of them even throw in a couple tidbits like “ask a question” or “be controversial” and a nice “attention span of a goldfish” for good measure.
And then, with all of these oh-so-helpful reminders swirling around in our brains, we sit down to write.
On a blank page.
That needs lines.
First lines.
Important lines.
Live or die lines.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
The cursor and the keys and the goldfish—er, person—you'd like to reach stare back at you, waiting for you to be good enough.
And you stare back, hoping for the exact same thing.
I won't tell you that beginnings aren't important. The entire writing world can't be wrong (can they?). But neither will I spend time on how they are important.
You already know.
And that's the problem.
There is so much pressure on getting those first words right that it can make an entire project go wrong.
Sometimes it goes wrong because we never defeat that blinking cursor.
Sometimes, because we've forgotten that it is, in fact, a person that we're writing to.
Not a nameless, faceless agent who holds our literary and professional fate in their hands.
Not a ReaderTM who will make or break our entire reputations by how many little yellow stars they give us.
Not the almighty algorithm and whether it deigns to present us to the endless scroll.
Not a goldfish.
I see this most often in heavily story-driven projects, like memoir or something that holds especially vulnerable insights. But we're all susceptible. It's easy to believe that we have to be shocking or gritty or salacious in order to be seen. In order to be read. In order to be believed.
Unfortunately, the blank page is not the deity it appears to be, and there is no inherent reward for offering up our deepest traumas to its ambivalent gaze.
There's no set of riddles that we can answer correctly to earn entry into the rest of the work.
No key to be found that might unlock the doors to writing bliss.
Beginnings are hard because all beginnings are hard.
New businesses, new chapters in life, new babies, new branding, new muscle groups, new houses, new jobs, new levels of growth…
Once we get going, in most cases, we're fine. But it's the getting part that takes an extra push.
This is an unavoidable truth literally embedded in the fabric of our reality. There's a whole law of physics to back me up.
Beginnings are hard, so we're not going to start there.
I say this in most of my guided 5 Minute Outline exercises—partly as a reminder that we're starting with number three on the list, and partly as a reminder that we don't have to make this work any harder than it already is.
This is a weird gig, friends.
No matter how natural our instincts for storytelling truly are, to do so in relative isolation rather than in communication with a responsive crowd is not easy.
To do so while bombarded with more competing messages than we were evolutionarily prepared to handle is not easy.
And then, just for extra spice, writers and non-writers like you and I decide to level it up by attaching that not-easy process to something important. Something meaningful. Often, something that tips us into the thing our brains resist the absolute most: change.
Writing is not easy.
We don't have to make it any harder than it already is.
Which is to say, we don't have to start at the beginning.
I can't help but think of a moment in the movie The Other Guys, where a character rambles:
I think the best way to tell the story is by starting at the end, briefly, then going back to the beginning, and then periodically returning to the end. Maybe giving different characters' perspectives throughout. Just to give it a bit of dynamism, otherwise it's just sort of a linear story.
And while I do cheer every time I see this scene—and I do love a good nonlinear story—the order of the events is not exactly what I mean when I say we don't have to start at the beginning.
I mean an entrepreneur doesn't stare at a blank pitch deck, waiting until the perfect first slide hits them so they can finally get to the concept of a business.
I mean an architect doesn't stare at a blue paper, re-drawing each line until enough perfect angles come together to reveal a house.
I mean we don't have to let the weight of a perfect first line pull us away from the reason we're writing in the first place.
I said that I stared at the page of this post for “far too long,” but in this case it was only a few minutes. Not because I landed on the perfect hook, but because I remembered the advice I often give my authors: If you can't think beyond the difficulty of the writing, then write about that.
Without worrying about it being a hook or even whether I would keep the line, I brought my frustration to the page: Here I am, yet again taking my own medicine and facing down minor demons, and how silly is that?
With the page no longer blank and those minor demons shushed to a low hum, I could think clearly enough to remember why I was writing in the first place: to real people, connected to my real work in the world, who get hung up on on the same thing I was struggling with in that very moment.
The thing is, while it is an added challenge to stretch into the skill and practice of writing while also stretching into new levels of visibility or new transitions in our lives and careers—there is an advantage as well.
We have momentum on our side.
When we align our writing to the work we're already doing in the world, the energy of that movement can power the writing as well.
And that alignment doesn't happen by choosing the first words first.
It happens by remembering who we're writing to.
By showing up for that person without any false pretenses.
By tapping into the energy of the vision that brought us to the page in the first place.
Hey, thanks for creating this space with me today.
Whether or not you’re ready to dive into writing just yet, remember that the best authors show up fully, just as they are. That’s all it takes—and you're already doing it.
Be sure to subscribe to catch every coaching moment to come. And when more of your book is ready to emerge, the space we made today will be here waiting for you.
And so will I.
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