Sunday journalling prompt
How to start tiny
Hello,
In the pie chart of my life, I suspect that a good slice would be taken up by ‘being daunted’. Given that a third is already absorbed by sleep (and that’s a conservative estimate), and a quarter is earmarked for wiping down the kitchen surfaces (what happens to them when I’m not looking??), it’s a wonder I get anything done at all.
Dauntedness is, for me, the harbinger of every new venture. I experience it as a physical constraint, a feeling of being stopped, a completely unintended reticence. For the whole of September, I was trying to start a new writing project, but, essentially, nothing happened. I did a lot of sitting down at my desk and staring at my screen or my notebook, but few words made it out of my head. Everything else suddenly felt very interesting indeed.
The root of this, of course, is fear: fear of not being equal to this new project; fear of making a fool of myself; fear of alienating the people who respect my work. You would think that this fear diminishes over time, but actually, it gets worse. The stakes are higher now than they used to be. There is further to fall.
It comforts me to think of this fear as a great unifier. It links my current self to the version of me who first sat down to write seriously as an adult, her head filled with ambition and shame. It links me to the new writers who sometimes comment on my page to say, I just don’t know how to make that leap. It is, I think, an expression of the importance we place on this work, which can seem so silly in a certain light, but which is actually deadly serious. It illuminates a vision of our future that is so precious that we can hardly bear to look at it.
Our work matters to us, but it is also terrifying, and so it requires special treatment to get started. This is not my first rodeo, so I have a way of getting past the dauntedness, and into flow. This is my way of urging words on the page when they are too afraid to come out of their burrow. Not perfect words. Not masses of them. But enough to subdue that daunted feeling that echoes out of the empty page.
When we’re starting a project, we often want to race to the end and get it done. For that reason, we don’t honour the process of beginning as a distinct phase in our practice. We set goals that are too ambitious and they feel impossible. These steps will help you to look after the tenderness of the early stage.
Look your project in the eye
Using the starting phrase, ‘I would love to write about…’ (or something that works better for you: ‘I would love to make…’; ‘I would love to create….’), write down everything you have in your head about your dream project.
You may have a lot already written in notes elsewhere; that’s fine. But here, you’re writing an outline of how you see it right now. Spend some time exploring your motivation here: ‘I would love to write about x because…’. Tell yourself why it matters so much.
Maybe you have more than one project like this (I always do!) - that’s fine. Write about them all. But now you’re going to pick one. This is the one you’re going to tackle first. This is the one that’s calling you the most right now.
Make a tiny goal
Take a breath. You’re going to coax yourself into starting this project by asking one question: What’s the least I could do?
What that means, in practice, is: what tiny gesture could I make on a regular basis that doesn’t feel scary?
How many words could you write with ease? (Feel free to insert your own equivalent to ‘words you could write.’)
How much time could you easily spend?
How many days of the week?
What method of writing feels easiest to you?
So, you might say, as I did at the beginning of October: ‘250 words every week day.’
I write quite a lot, and I don’t have another job, so 250 words feels easy to me. But for you, it might be different. Try these on for size:
100 words a day for three lunchtimes a week.
Fifteen minutes of writing every morning before work.
Two sides of A4, handwritten, on Saturday and Sunday.
Sure, that won’t make a novel very quickly, but it’s a whole lot more words than you’d have if you carried on staring into space.
Importantly, if you find, after a couple of weeks, that you can’t meet this goal, then revise it downwards. The goal is the problem, not you. Your work here is to get the words started, rather than terrifying them back into their hole. Be kind to yourself. It’s the only thing that works.
Good luck - if you can bear to, share your tiny goal in the comments, and let me know how you get on.
Take care,
Katherine
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This is so timely and helpful, Katherine. Thank you. Yesterday, before sunrise, I was attempting to write a page about why I wanted to write something. After my initial stab at it, I wrote “Other thoughts” and the first thought I listed was “It is scary.” It’s helpful to know I’m not alone in thinking like this.
I have a history of starting projects (much enthusiasm, I love this idea!) and then quitting them pretty quickly (too impractical, not smart enough, already been done, fill in the negative). My - Least I Can Do, is just do it for me. Knock out all grand future goals (create a substack, self publish a book, sell my drawings on etsy) and just do something (write or draw) every day no matter how long or short the time spent. I even tell myself, you don’t have to finish this project, although mostly I do.