Welcome! 3 tips to start things rolling

Welcome to my site, you brilliant writer, you.

Here I am, as I’ve been promising for aeons, offering my editing services and sharing some thoughts on writing. I’m keeping it short and sweet today, but this is just the beginning.

I have three things to say to you, right off the bat. Or the nib, as it may be.

First, you are god in your world. When you write, you are writing. No one else can write what you write. Enjoy it. You’re allowed to make it whatever you want it to be. Open that notebook. Start that new document. However you write, whenever and wherever you write, the first rule is—let your brain off the hook and don’t worry about what your mother wants, or your ex-boyfriend, or some hypothetical agent or publisher. Your ex-boyfriend will literally never matter again, and the agent and publisher come much later. First, be your own god, create your world and your people, and have fun.

Second, have something at your elbow, a cup of coffee and a biscuit, or a glass of water and some fruit. Carrot sticks. Whatever is easy to manage and won’t make your fingers sticky. Sit where there’s a window looking out on a garden, if you can, or put a potted plant on the desk in front of you. Then, when you get that moment where you think, ‘I’m hopeless at this, I can’t think what happens next, all the words have forsaken me and there is NOTHING IN MY BRAIN,’ stop. Put down your pen. Take a sip of water. Pick up a carrot stick. Look at the plant. Stop trying to think. You can’t write at this moment anyway, because your hands are busy. So don’t worry about it. Look at that lovely plant, how green it is, how the little leaves unfurl, how bright the new shoot looks. Crunch the carrot. Chances are, when you’ve done all that, your moment of mind-blank will be over, and you’ll turn back to your notebook or screen to find that things are flowing again.

Of course there are bigger hiccups, and I’ll come to some of those in later posts, but for the little pebbles we stub our toes on eighty times a day, the momentary stammers, it’s amazing what a sip and a bite and a moment of unpressured peace will do.

Third and last today, remember to read. Reading is writing too. It’s the source and lodestar of our craft. Real people wrote the things we read, and what they did inspires us, trains us, informs us and opens our minds and hearts. As someday, quite soon now, our writing will do for others. And so it goes.

Keep writing, friends.

Joanna x