It’s back to basics, y’all. You want to write? Great. You like the idea of being a writer? Fantastic. You have great thoughts that you need to share with the world? Wonderful.
You want to achieve freedom through art? Yippee.
Get out the two ingredients you really need: a really cheap ballpoint pen and an even cheaper spiral-bound notebook.
Here’s what you do: set the timer on your watch or alarm clock or microwave. Fifteen minutes. Pen to paper. Don’t stop. That’s the first step in a long, and I really do mean long, line of steps it takes to be writer.
Guess what the second step is? On the second day, pull out the pen, the notebook and the timer and do it again. Fifteen minutes, pen to paper. Don’t go back and read what you wrote the day before, either. Just forge ahead. I shouldn’t tell you but I will: Steps 3 through 99 are exactly like the first two steps.
At the end of the first week, increase the time to 20 or 25 minutes. When you’re finished filling the notebook, take a few days off. Then, go back through the notebook armed with a yellow highlighter and mark the phrases and sentences you really like.
Now what? You have a notebook full of wonderful phrases and great thoughts, and this is the starting point to turning your dreams of becoming a writer into reality.
I’ve done this exercise many times since I started writing several decades ago, and I’m about to embark on that particular journey again, as I take a break from my novel and start a non-fiction project that’s been nagging at me for the past two years.
Join me.
Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Illinois, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan, is working on a couple of novels and has 10 days to go before she finishes the first year of her art-a-day challenge.