“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
— attributed to Mark Twain

Every writer knows the truest version of this quote: the secret of finishing the story is starting the story.

Not outlining it. Not researching it for the third month running. Not waiting for the quiet house, the good pen, the perfect first line. Starting — one rough paragraph that gives the next paragraph something to stand on.

Twain (to whom this line is attributed, in the loose way of beloved sayings) understood that beginnings don’t have to be good. They have to exist. A first draft is allowed to be clumsy; an unwritten book isn’t allowed anything at all.

So this week’s practice, for writers and everyone else: pick the thing you’ve been circling, and give it fifteen unglamorous minutes. The secret of getting ahead is getting started — and the secret of getting started is that it counts even when it’s small.

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