Jump-start Your Writing Journey

My dear friend Nancy had dreams of being a writer after commanding a classroom forever. She figured it would finally give her a creative outlet instead of taking up knitting afghans or cultivating orchids. She hated grading papers and wanted to expand her opportunities. As we met at Panera, she shared that she wanted people to read her thoughts and allow her personal legacy to live on. “Grand idea,” I said. “I want the same.”

To begin with, I have always believed most writers start with being voracious readers. “Nancy, does your nightstand contain stacks of books that are just waiting to be read? Do you receive books every Christmas? Do you treat your books like they’re your children? Do you want to be the next James Patterson, John Grisham, Freida McFadden, or Suzanne Collins?” I paused and took a sip of soup. “You want to be judged and allow strangers to criticize these same thoughts, right?” She looked startled at being judged. She’s judged/graded others her entire life.

“Then have a seat, Nancy, and get a pen and paper ready.” Or your phone and stylus. Or your laptop and fingertips. “Just don’t tell everybody you’re writing yet because then they will want to read it and give you advice and certainly don’t tell them I’m helping you. I should remind you that some of these people didn’t do well in their own English classes in high school, so be careful in whom you confide.”

“I know. I’ve had some of them in my classes.” Nancy rolled her eyes and pulled out a pen.

At this point, Nancy became confused. “Where…where do I start? I’ve taught curricular units on writing sterile essays and dry college research papers, but this feels different.” Probably the first thing you’ll need is something worthwhile to share, I suggest. Ideas and thoughts are the parents of essays, stories, poems, songs, and plays. I explain the many areas from which she can cull fresh ideas.

Observation of the world is one of the essential ways of gathering information. This includes all the senses because not all writing conveys visual imagery alone. I asked her, “How would you describe a tangerine to a blind person?” She looks at me strangely. I continued. “Most likely the smell, taste, and texture of the fruit would stand out. I mean think about it: how can you describe the color orange without comparing it to another orange thing? Is that really a description?” She took her tangerine and threw it at me.

Nancy asked about what kind of writing is out there; she never taught creative writing. I replied, “A lot.” Form and function come next in the decision tree. “As you know, an essay can inform or persuade. A story is short and concise. A novel is a short story on steroids. A play is a story intended to be seen and heard, not read. Graphic novels include a lot of art with the storyline (remember comics?). Songs are poems set to music.” However, I reminded her that poems can be real rule-breakers, the rebels of the writing genre.

“I remember poems as a 3rd grader. Acrostic, I think they were.” Yes, Nancy, that’s a type of poem. A poem usually has structure, but it’s the goth member of writing: beautifully different but not always following the norms of rhyme and rhythm. It can be free form or tightly structured. It can be as long as The Odyssey (12,109 lines) or as short as a haiku (seventeen syllables). A formal sonnet has fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter following one of several stanza formations and theme patterns. A poem like those of e e cummings can have lines that start with periods and words smashed together like a train wreck. “You must decide how you want your thoughts to be conveyed,” I tell her. “How you say it is as important as what you want to say. Marshall McLuhan once wrote, ‘Media is the message.’ This is a perfect example.”

Nancy jotted this information down.

“All righty, now. You want to write an essay to complain about the prices of eggs and milk. Do you want it to inform or persuade?”

She thinks for a moment. “I want to do both. Is that possible?”

“You can just complain about the prices and simply move along, like most posters and commenters in the sub-Reddits or other social media do. Persuasion is a trickier concept,” I told her. You have to use concepts like ethos, pathos, and logos to convince someone that your idea is the correct one. “Proof must come from reliable sources which is becoming more difficult these days with AI apps like ChapGpt (OpenAI), CoPilot (Microsoft), and Gemini (Google) churning out what’s known as AI slop. They aren’t reliable. Let me repeat that: AI is neither reliable nor ethical to generate writing that is supposed to be original thought from you.”

I stood on a table nearby. “Listen to me: Do. Not. Use. AI. In. Your. Writing. It bears repeating; I can’t be more clear on this. No.” A member of the staff gently told me to get off the table.

“Ok. I get it. AI is the devil,” she nodded.

“Yes, it is.”

My explanation continued in my mental slideshow. Enough about essays, I thought; high school teachers have a hard enough time as it is to teach proper essay writing form in a year. I can’t do it in just one essay. Entire textbooks and college classes have been devoted to specific types of writing. “Let’s approach the creative side and start with short stories to be on the safe side.”

“Ok,” she agreed. “Let’s go.” She leaned forward, eager to learn.

“Ever wonder how movies are made or books written?”

She nodded. “I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once because it won an Oscar, and I was so confused. Who comes up these bizarre ideas?”

“Someone (or a group of writers) had to come together to string ideas together to create a coherent story first.” Coherent being the main focus here. Some of the heavy lifters in literature are the most confounding things to understand, such as Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs or House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Might as well use these as paperweights. “To get your thoughts clearly out to the public,” I added, “your writing has to be understandable. Does it follow a timeline? Are the characters realistic? Is it fun? Fun books may not make it into the list of classics by educated scholars, but they can make you some money and get you noticed. I happen to like Janet Evanovich, but those books are like eating pistachios.”

“I like Agatha Christie. I know what you mean. They’re predictable but fun.”

Most movies come from books or screenplays, so we can exclude them in this discussion. “Ideas in books don’t just come from your thoughts simply tumbling out of your brain like confetti,” I pointed out. “There’s a lot of planning. Some authors use storyboards or journals, some use one of the gazillion writing support apps on the market, and I use random sticky notes, scraps of paper, receipts, and restaurant napkins. Whatever I have that’s handy. Then I toss them into my purse or grocery bag and forget about them for a while.”

“What do you mean you forget them?”

I continued. “That’s an important step, believe it or not. When you revisit your scraps of ideas, does it still make sense? Would it still be fun to write about? If not, I need to start all over. Fiction is such a broad genre; Wikipedia lists over a hundred different fiction sub-genres I had to look up, including Fratire (21st century fiction that’s chauvinistic), Lad lit, (by males for young males), or even Picaresque swashbuckler (pieces featuring a roguish pirate).” More sub-genres appear as a taste for them develops. An author is making money, and before you know it, a new sub-sub-genre has been created.

“What if I want to write about something but don’t know much about it? I’m interested in it, but I don’t know the ins-and-outs of murder mysteries,” Nancy asked, thinking about Murder on the Orient Express. “For example, I don’t know much about trains.”

The other important piece of advice to follow is to write about something you know about or something you’re familiar with. “However, if your heart is hell-bent on writing about true crime stories, there are books out there such as The Writer’s Complete Crime Reference Book by Martin Roth that includes three whole pages of Acts of Violence. It also contains extensive lists of necessary details such as Motives, Drugs, Gang Structures, Police Department Operations, Court Procedures, and the ever-popular List of Crimes.” This just brings me back to the advice about writing what you know. “I’m now worried about Mr. Roth. How did he acquire this knowledge? And why?” Don’t get me started on another descriptive book I found devoted to the myriad causes of death. Sheesh-not during lunch.

We finished our muffins, and she finished some notes.

I offered more writing ideas. “Maybe you’ve been inspired by a dream. Something your brain tossed at you in deep sleep, and you happened to remember it. By some miracle you retained most of the details and decided that would make an intriguing story. This is one birth of an idea, perhaps Caesarian. Maybe you have a deep family memory you want to carve into a funny episode, or details about something you wish would happen (“I just won a million dollars! What should I do now?).” Ideas can come from anywhere. They can be based in fact (historical or creative fiction) or completely fantasy (science, woodland creatures, dragons, etc.) Even absurd things such as aliens living in your sink that survive on your toothpaste would make an interesting story. “Didn’t your husband write about sink critters like that before?”

“Probably. He likes to think outside the box, he calls it.”

I nodded. “I myself especially like writing stories based on photographs I’ve taken. I particularly like to capture items where they don’t belong. I once wrote an entire story about how a pair of men’s boxer shorts came to be on the shoreline. It’s a little risqué, but that was intentional.” I gave her some more suggestions. “Create the backstory to a ridiculous photo you took when you were inebriated. Find a silly picture you took in middle school and explain how it happened. Place the photo in your piece to help the reader understand why you wrote about it.”

I could hear the wheels turning in her mind.

“Perhaps you want to pen the fictional inspiration behind “Bohemian Rhapsody” or describe how Jackson Pollock decided paint splatter would be famous one day. Practicing writing by starting with smaller chunks or short short stories is a good idea. Ask your social media friends to give you a writing prompt. Then follow through.” I told her to do some research first; hello, internet. “I’ve received writing prompts such as the following: what if the world were flat; write about the tiniest monkey in the world; write about THIS [photo of spider]; antivaxxers; a Victorian mystery; an internet predator. And I wrote a fictional story for all of these and sent it back to them. It was a great way to get ideas churning in my head to springboard into other writing endeavors.”

I mentioned, “Joining writing platforms and sites is another excellent idea. Many have contests and challenges to inspire you as you work on the next Great American Novel. I won some big bucks in a challenge by writing what I did for a living. Talk about writing what you know,” I chuckled. “That was an easy prompt, but it took me weeks to finish.”

I continued. “There are other writers out there who would appreciate your input. In the same vein, you can ask others to read your work and supply some critiques. That’s different from criticism or denunciation of your worth. Don’t be offended if someone says, ‘I don’t understand why you did X or killed off Y.’ These beta readers may have a point; maybe your logic is a little off, or you forgot a detail. “I beta read a novel and gently reminded the author that hyper-specific military jargon may not be well known to a regular citizen like me. You should put your writing away for a week or two and THEN revisit it. You’ll get a fresh perspective on your writing,” I took a sip of sweet raspberry tea. “Sometimes reading it aloud will help you hear the problem. Having someone read it out to you can help as well.” I caught many proofreading and grammar errors that way.

“Remember the basics, Nancy, words are simply your building blocks which get strung together to form phrases and words. These are then put together to create the framework of your writing. Sometimes as I’m writing, I wonder if I’ve created a sentence that has never been written before.”

“I’ve done that. I would also like to write children’s books for schools. I want to spark their imaginations and get them interested in reading and being kind to one another.”

“Perfect idea,” I told her. Using an online thesaurus or rhyming dictionary is not cheating; sometimes reaching for the perfect word needs a little boost. Assist. Help. Aid. Helping Hand. Facilitation. Support. Encouragement. “To get more oomph in your writing, explore the world of figurative language where metaphors reign supreme and similes are like little bridges of understanding. In academic writing, those phrases are no-no’s, like eating dessert before dinner.”

“I see what you did there.” Nancy smiled.

Choose to blend genres if you the mood hits you. That’s a mind-bender, I explained. I ponder the existence of 3-D novels with music and scent built in. I give her some last bits of advice. “The more you read and the more you write, the better your writing will become. It’s inevitable. Practice doesn’t always make perfect, but it does make it better.”

“Does that mean I have to grade my own writing?” Nancy asked. “I’m done with teaching and don’t want to grade anymore.”

“Alas, my dear, you’ll need to revise often and proofread each time you open your document. It’s the final polish on your writing that allows your thoughts to shine. Don’t give up on your writing dreams because you think you can’t do it or it’s a waste of time. Just do it and share it with the world. Make it a resolution for 2026.”

We finished our tea and concluded our meeting. "Write is always better than wrong. Good luck and Godspeed.”