Start to Write: Break Free from Rules, Overcome Your Fear, and Start Writing Today: Step-by-Step Guides for Growing Writers, #2

By Christine Niles

You want to write. 

Maybe you leave story ideas on post-it notes all over the house (or your office, or your car, or stuck to your neighbor’s dog). You frantically whisper notes into your phone while you wait in line at the DMV. You might even schedule a four-hour block of time, set yourself up at a hipster coffee shop to people-watch and write. 

Then you sit down in front of a blank screen and you stare at it. You prepare for battle. You order another quad-venti-three-pump-hazelnut latte. 

It’s scary, right? It doesn’t have to be. 

What’s stopping you from writing right now? 
Do you wonder if anyone will ever read what you’re writing? 
Do you fear your writing just isn’t quite good enough? 
Do you feel like everything has already been said? 
Do you need a mentor to guide you? 
Do you think you need to go back to school and get a creative writing degree? 
Do you stare at a blank screen waiting for your Muse to give you the perfect opening line? 

I hear you. I’ve been you. You are not alone. 

I started writing seriously a few years ago. I spun around in my head about what to write, how to make people read my writing, and how to write the perfect opening line for a blog post. I wasted hours researching each idea to see if someone, sometime in the history of the world, had already stumbled upon it. I used a lot of energy worrying and then preaching at readers instead of opening up a conversation. I’ve learned a lot about how to be a writer the hard way. 

Since then, I’ve spent hundreds of hours coaching writers in storytelling and copywriting. I’ve helped a lot of new writers work through the same things I struggled with. 

I want your road to be easier. 

In Start to Write, I share eight lessons I learned about being a writer. These are the things I wish I had known when I started. Things that could have saved me a lot of time and emotional energy. 

I want to encourage you with practical advice and clear up the mystery of what it means to be a writer. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christine Niles
• Release date: Oct 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519943392

Book preview

Start to Write: Break Free from Rules, Overcome Your Fear, and Start Writing Today

Christine Royse Niles

START to WRITE: Break Free from Rules, Overcome Your Fear, and Start Writing Today

Book 2 in the series: Step by Step Guides for Growing Writers

Find the whole series here: www.RiverOfThoughts.com/Steps

Copyright © 2015 by Christine Royse Niles

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system except for brief quotations for the purpose of review, without written permission from the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Brad Blackman

Edited by Andrea Cumbo-Floyd: www.andilit.com

The resources included in this book will periodically be updated. Make sure to sign up at RiverofThoughts.com to receive updates and other helpful or entertaining goodies from time to time.

I’ve worked with bestselling authors to launch nearly a million dollars’ worth of books and online courses. I’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t), and I know what it takes to get your early books out into the world and then grow as you go. And I want to help make it easier for you.

The Growing Writer’s Survival Kit offers you an ever-expanding set of tools to get through any roadblock you’re facing:

A Minimalist Guide to Book Launches will cut through the noise and show you exactly what you need to do to get your work out there.

The Next Steps Goal Planning Worksheet will help you plan and finish your next project.

The Secret: a manifesto for the discouraged might encourage you when you hit one of those days when you just plain can’t keep going.

Click here to get your free Survival Kit today!

Introduction

I have been dreaming of being a writer almost as long as I’ve known how to read.

When I was little, I loved stories about exotic places — incredible characters in imaginary lands.

When I was a teenager, I wrote to express my individuality. To oppose the ordinary.

As a grown-up, I wrote to stay alive — both figuratively and literally — to keep me sane and to put food on the table. I wrote parables of survival. I wrote troubleshooting manuals.

And then I stopped with the stories.

***

Writing