Start small. If you try to think about all of it at once-the world you hope to capture on the page, everything you know, every idea you've ever had, each person you've met, and the panoply of feelings coursing through you like a river-you'll be overcome with paralysis. Who wouldn't be? Just the way we put one foot in front of the other as we get out of bed, the way we brush our teeth, splash water on our faces, feed our animals if we have animals, and our children if we have them, measure the coffee, put on the kettle, we need to approach our writing one step at a time. It's impossible to evoke an entire world at the start. But it is possible to describe a crack in the sidewalk, the scuffed heel of a shoe. And that sidewalk crack or scuffed heel can be the point of entry, like a pinhole of light, to a story, a character, a universe.
Think of a jigsaw puzzle-one of those vexingly complicated puzzles that comes in a big box. Almost every family rec room has, at one point or another, seen one of these puzzles, spilled from its box, hundreds of pieces strewn across the floor. It starts out as a fun rainy day activity and-unless the family members are both freakishly patient and spacially gifted-there it will stay, gathering dust until, finally, someone sweeps all the puzzle pieces back into the box and retires it to the far reaches of a cupboard, never to be seen again. Too many colors and shapes! Too many possibilities! Where to even begin?
This is the writer's mind when embarking on a piece of work. We sit perched in front of our laptop screen, or our spiral-bound notebook, or giant desktop monitor, and-we freeze. After all, it's so important, isn't it, where we start? Don't we need a plan? Hadn't we better know where we're going? The stakes feel impossibly high. We're convinced that first word will dictate every word that follows. We are tyrannized by our options. All sorts of voices scream in our heads. First person or third? Present tense or past? The span of five minutes? Or two hundred years? What the hell are we doing? We don't know.
Build a corner. This is what people who are good at puzzles do. They ignore the heap of colors and shapes and simply look for straight edges. They focus on piecing together one tiny corner. Every book, story, and essay begins with a single word. Then a sentence. Then a paragraph. These words, sentences, paragraphs may well end up not being the actual beginning. You can't know that now. Straining to know the whole of the story before you set out is a bit like imagining great--grandchildren on a first date. But you can start with the smallest detail. Give us the gravel scattering along the highway as the pickup truck roars past. The crumb of food the wife wipes from her husband's beard. The ripped bottom of a girl's faded jeans. Anchor yourself somewhere-anywhere-on the page. You are committing, yes-but the commitment is to this tiny corner. One word. One image. One detail. Go ahead. Then see what happens next.
