I started writing last night.  I got a bug at about 2AM and I couldn’t go to sleep because I had a sudden realization of how the book will begin.

I’ve been doing all this research on authors writing the same sort of stories I plan on writing, and just am reading as much as I can to figure out what I feel works and doesn’t.  Although I know the subject I’m going to write about, I had no idea where to begin, and I felt research would help guide me in the right direction.  It’s amazing how many young female authors there are that are really popular right now.

I think the biggest piece of advice was found on Cecelia Ahern’s website.  I ordered a book of hers online called Thanks for the Memories, and when I received it, I realized she was the author of P.S. I Love You, which happens to be one of my favorite moves of all time.  I didn’t even know that was a book, let alone a young female author had written it!  Not only did she write that, but she is also the creator of Samantha Who? starring Christina Applegate.  It’s so nice to see women who are multi-talented, and bringing strong female leads to the cinema and television.  Right, so this is the advice she writes to aspiring writers about how to start a book:

“Find the environment that suits you to write. Silence is an inspiration to me. Space is so important. Left alone for an hour, my mind starts to create. Scenes begin to fill the empty spaces and the sounds of those scenes and characters voices fill the silences. My belief is that if you wake up in the morning, or in the middle of the night, and all you want to do is write, then you’re a writer. There is no magic formula to being a writer and there is no magic formula to writing a book. It’s something that comes from deep inside that cannot be taught in any writing class….

You have to introduce your characters, you have to set up the story, you have to embark on the story, travel through the story, allow your characters to often lead the way, then you reach your destination that should feel right without having taken any short cuts or U-turns or circles and then end it when the journey’s complete.
I think that aspiring writers should find their own voice, don’t try to repeat what is already done because it seems to be successful, do your own thing. Don’t be afraid to do something different.”

I am so excited to have my own space and my own silence to find that time.  It seems to me that writing is a lot like acting, only you get to find more than one character at a time.  I can not wait to really get into the journey.  Just as in acting there are no shortcuts, it seems that writing will teach me again to go through the journey one step at a time.  We are so often probed to get a result, get a product…when will I learn that it’s the process that counts?