What is writing? Is it lots of words? Is it written in blood? Something that rhymes? Gateway to a movie deal? Anything you can read?

Where does your writing start and how do you get started?

Pen or pencil, quill or chalk, rolling writer, gel pen, BIC or sharp stick. The implement you choose should work best for you.

Your paper can be in a spiral or tablet, ledger, chap book bound with twigs, lined, plain, or parchment. Again, it is what works for you. Some people fold their pages in half to force themselves to be concise.

Laptop, digital tablet or desktop, heck I have even written on my phone when I had a good idea to get down. I love that my bluetooth keyboard works with both iPad and iPhone.

Lot of buzz about formats: digital versus Digital 3.0 (writing by hand or by keyboard) or even by dictation. Most important way to write the method that is most natural to you.

Whatever you create can be turned into digital bits later. Just like an ideal location (cafe, beachfront, forest stream, attic corner) if it encourages your production, then it works. Easy-to-manage formats for writing it down is key to accessing the most you have to give. How you write must never get in the way of what you write.

Some even take one step further and use a old time ink pen with a lovely nib and ink derived from the crushing of rare herbs and fossils. Others will write with crappy pencils, stubs tossed away as trash from some well-heeled accountant or pigtailed schoolgirl. If I say doesn’t matter, it is not me saying the source of implements is of no consequence, no, I’m saying if it makes magic happen then it is the right choice for you.

Don’t ever let the lack of an ideal vantage point in the café, a wobbly chair, a noisy child, a loud cell phone yapper, or lack of your ideal medium ever stop you.

Handwritten, typed, or dictated it is the product of your imagination and craft. If you write by hand, please do type it up as you go. Don’t be like me. I had 36 notebooks to type up. That is a self-made obstacle that almost drove me off the path. I was afraid to get close to actually finishing my book because then I would have to publish it. So I wrote faithfully and never typed it up. Until one day I took time to hug myself and climbed the mountain.

So tell me, what is your writing to you?

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