Clearing the way to start writing with clarity

October 1, 2007 · by Joanna Paterson · in

Getting started is often the hardest part.

I know, I know that’s true of many new projects, ideas, activities but finding the right words to open a new piece of writing – a report, an article, a book, a blog post – well sometimes that part can be hard.

Sometimes we need to clear things out of the way before we can get started.

Of course, anyone prone to procrastination will know that you can take this to the nth degree in order to put off starting. But sometimes you do need to take your time, to prepare the ground, to get rid of the things that might be getting in your way.

I was thinking about this over the weekend as I soaked up the glorious autumn sunshine in Edinburgh, did a bit of late summer clearance in my postage stamp of a garden, and started to turn my attention to a new month of writing: on clarity.

I realised that some of the ground I needed to prepare was:

Letting go of the last month’s writing – which included a final piece on authenticity and blogging and a round up of what we’d covered, but more than that, letting go of the attachment I had to it. Because I realised that after a month’s writing I was feeling a lot more confident in writing about authenticity than I had been at the start – and I didn’t want to start back at the bottom of another learning curve. And yet, of course that’s precisely where I need to go next. It doesn’t mean the end of authenticity – of course it doesn’t, all of that learning will inform the writing here as we move forward, and I’ve lots of ideas about e-books and coaching materials that I can develop on the back of it. But it does mean being ready to shift my focus to something new.

Letting go of the fear – I thought I learned this lesson last month but the start of another focused topic throws up another small voice of anxiety – who are you to talk about this, you’re no expert, what will you write about, you’ll have nothing to say… and so on. Listening to, recognising these gremlin voices is the first step in letting them go (and kicking them into touch). I also like to replace mine with something altogether more positive – this one will serve well for now:

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” (E.L.Doctorow)

Recognising blocks and barriers – there’s some bit of me protesting that it’s a shift too far to go from a focus on authenticity to a month long series on clarity. I don’t want to shift from encouraging people to sing from the rooftops to coaching them ‘how’ to write. But I don’t think that’s where I’ll be going with this. Of course we can learn how to cut, chop, nurture and prune our writing. Of course we can learn from the style guides how to let our message shine through. But there’s no tension, really, between clear writing and authentic writing because singing our own song will help us to be clear about the right words to use – and chopping out the excess words can help us get clear on what we really want to say.

Starting to shift my focus - by looking for words and pictures to inspire me, to give me the opening ‘hook’. I loved this photo because it matches the time of year (here) – and because there’s something about our ability to see things more clearly – to recognise them for what they are, to see their colour, grace, power, strength, sadness, detail, beauty, meaning – through reflection that I want to explore.

And there are always words, aren’t there, that can give you the key to unlocking the start. Alice is a favourite of mine when I’m looking for clear, plain language solutions however perplexing a situation we might find ourselves in.

“The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
‘Begin at the beginning’, the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Bravo. And that’s me clear what I need to do, and ready to begin.
Photo credit to Wrex at Flickr

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