Baby Steps

       English class… ever wonder how your going to start that 12 page paper for that paper that is due in a week? Well, I know I do… I am never sure how I am going to begin a paper or even what is going to go in the middle or even the end. Well, maybe the end a bit more than the beginning, but you get my point. Feeling lost from the start is a usual occurrence for me when writing me papers, until a read a quick excerpt from the book Birds by Birds by Anne Lamott's.

       Anne shares with us that “’writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feel ahead of you.”

      Those two sentences have changed how I view writing from start to finish. Just like authors that write 300 page novels, they too have to write a first, second, and most likely a third draft to make it to a best seller. Now I know my paper won’t be on the top of the list of “need to reads” but just understanding that each step you take needs to be a baby step. There’s no need to think about what you are going to write in the middle when I don’t even have a beginning. To be a successful writer, you need to take in things by bits and pieces. Starting with my introduction.

      As said in Birds by Birds, you should view your writing as a one-inch picture frame. You can only write as much as you can see or feel. If you try to shove all your ideas into one area…well most likely you have already given up or don’t know where to begin. Like me. But reading this short piece from her book has for sure changed the way I am going to approach my writing. I realize now that if I just take baby steps to get there, I will be running like a champ in no time!