10 Ways to Start the Writing Process When You’re Staring at a Blank Page

Louis L'Amour is attributed as saying, “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”1 Sounds easy enough, but a lot of times we can’t even find the faucet. Or we find the faucet but fail to turn it on. Either way, we want to write, but no words flow. Is that you? Are you ready to begin writing but you don’t know where to start—you don’t know how to get the words to flow? I’ve got 10 options for you—ten faucets, if you will. I’ll bet one stands out more than the rest. Pick one. Try it. See if it gets those words flowing. 1. Start with a memory Think back to an event that seems small yet feels packed with emotion. You don’t have to fully understand it. Just remember it. Something changed due to that event. The change may have been subtle or seismic, but you emerged from it a different person.  The simple prompt “I remember” can get you started. Use it as a journal entry and see where it takes you, or go ahead and start writing something more substantial. When you remember and recreate these scenes from your past, you’ll learn from them. I experienced this when I wrote a short scene in this style, called One Lone Duck Egg. 2. Start with a photo Photos can whisk us back to another place and time, whether as recently as last week or as long ago as childhood. Pull a photo from your collection of family photos, physical or digital.  Write in response to the scene. Recreate it. Let the memories unfold.  You could be in the photo, or not.  You could write the story behind the moment, or elaborate on a particular person in the scene.  * What do you think was happening?  * Why were you—or weren’t you—there?  * What does this say to you today? Another approach is to combine words with images to create a photo essay.  Back in 2011, I walked around the farm where I grew up and snapped photos. Each time, a fragment of thought came to mind, a flash of a memory.  When I got home, I pieced it together to come up with Dancing in the Loft. 3. Start with art Art ignites imagination. Whether you invent a story behind the piece of art you choose, or you document your response to it, you’ll end up with an interesting project.  One of my creative writing professors in college gave us a similar assignment to write poetry from art. It’s possible she was trying to introduce us to ekphrastic poetry,2 which, according to the Lantern Review Blog,3 is “written in conversation with a work(s) of visual art.”  But she took a less formal approach, asking us to find some art, study it carefully, and write a poem. I used a small,