Small Beginnings

Fifteen years ago I started a practice that laid the ground work for doing something I never imaged I would do – publish a book. At the time writing a book wasn’t on my radar or a hint of an aspiration. I was just restless and had a lot of unprocessed emotions welling up in me. So I took up journaling about my days, events and emotions that I didn’t know how to handle.

I wrote in those lined composition books like I am writing now. The fact that the books were a dollar or less made my words less precious and it made it easier for the words to spill out on the page. I wrote often, whenever I had time or a burning topic to explore but I didn’t journal every day. The stuff I wrote was no literary masterwork. Mostly it was rantings about my misery or confusion at the time.

How would something like journaling help you become a published author? For one, it got me writing and figuring out how to express myself and how I felt about the world. The best way to get good at something is to do it and do it often.

Secondly, because I knew no one else would be reading my journals, I was less inhibited about what I wrote. I could be as raw, gritty and vulnerable as I dared to. I wasn’t concerned with grammar or spelling. My main objective was to put on paper how I was feeling or to describe a scene as detailed as I could. It freed me up to just write and experiment.

I got more interested in writing as a creative expression. I took workshops, read books on the subject and wrote more. I eventually changed jobs and took up technical writing as a new career. My day job was not the most creative but it got me practicing writing. And it didn’t hurt that I got paid to write.

Eventually I tired of my pages of rants and longed to write about the beauty, wonder and irony I saw in the world. After a number of years of journaling, I tried my hand at writing poetry. I knew almost nothing about poems and, up until then, I had read very few of them. I felt poetry was a lofty endeavor that was a bit above my pay grade. However, what attracted me to writing poems was the immediacy and brevity of the craft. I did not have time to write a novel but I could make time to write poems.

I joined a few writing groups where we write from prompts but did not offer any critique of the work. I knew my poems were too naive and green. They were not ready for any serious critique. What I gained from those writing groups was being around more experienced poets and hearing how they would phrase a feeling or describe a setting. Going to these writing groups also set aside time to write. And the prompts that others brought gave me topics that I normally would not have written about on my own.

When I was getting certified as a creativity coach, the idea of a book to help artists remove creative blocks came to me. Since I’ve been writing fairly regularly for a number of years, I felt up to the task of writing my book – Inspiration is Only the Spark: Keeping the Creative Flame Burning. Because of the writing practice I had done with my job, journaling and poetry, it was an easy transition for me.

Last weekend in Ashland, OR, I shared a table at the Local Author Faire with another author, Roger Golden Brown. He had a number of books he had written and self-published. Most of the material for his books were gleaned from his journals, 90 volumes of them. So consider small beginnings like doing scales on the piano or having a running routine in preparation for a 10K race, it is the slow and steady work of becoming a master at something. It’s not glamorous but so necessary.

Fifteen years ago if you told me that I would publish a book and win awards for my poetry, I would have had a good laugh about that. But that’s where I wound up after starting the simple practice of journaling. It’s true. Great things start with small beginnings. You just need to be willing to do the work and go where they lead you. What small beginnings await you?