How to Start Writing Your Story When You Don't Know Where to Begin
If you want to write your story but keep getting stuck on one question—Where do I start?—this episode is for you.
One of the biggest misconceptions about writing a personal story, memoir, or nonfiction book is that you have to begin at the chronological beginning. Your childhood. Your family history. The first thing that happened.
But the place where you begin writing your story and the place where your finished book begins don't have to be the same.
In this episode of The Edit With Holly Totten Writing, Editing, Publishing, Holly continues her series inspired by a listener who wants to write his story but has struggled to get the words onto the page.
This time, we're taking some of the pressure off finding the "perfect" beginning.
You'll learn:
- Why you don't need to know what Chapter One is before you start writing
- The difference between where your book begins and where you begin writing
- Why chronological order isn't always the best place to start
- How to identify the part of your story that's ready to be written now
- Why the scene, conversation, person, or moment you can't stop thinking about may be the best place to begin
- Why your first pages are allowed to be messy and disconnected
- How writing the middle can sometimes help you discover the real beginning
- Why structure and organization can—and should—come later
Instead of asking, "Where should my book start?", Holly encourages you to ask a much simpler question:
"What part of my story can I tell today?"
Maybe it's the moment you can still see clearly.
Maybe it's the conversation you've never forgotten.
Maybe it's the story you've told a hundred times.
Maybe it's the day when everything changed.
Start there.
You can move it, rewrite it, add to it, or even remove it later. That's what editing is for.
Right now, your job isn't to perfectly organize your story.
Your job is to write it.
Coming Next
In the next episode, we'll take this series one step further with another important question:
What is my story really about?
Because your life contains thousands of stories—but the book you're writing probably isn't about all of them.
The Edit With Holly Totten
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You can reach Holly at:
https://writelynotable.com
wrtielynotable@gmail.com
Remember: Your story without your voice is only words.
