Breinthewild

I’ve read a decent amount of writing about writing, particularly when I was younger and more concerned with the quality of my work rather than, you know, just doing the thing. Some of that advice was helpful. Some was not. Regardless, it always seemed to come from the same kind of person: someone who had ‘made it’ as a professional writer (making enough from writing to do only that) and who was years removed from their early years of trying and failing.

I wanted to hear from someone who wasn’t that. Not yet. Someone stuck in the muddling middle, the infinite space between ‘I think I could do this writing thing professionally’ and ‘I am doing the writing thing professionally.’ I’m sure they exist. I likely didn’t find them for the same reason I wanted to read them in the first place: they didn’t have giant platforms or well-oiled marketing machines. They were and are, in other words, like me.

This series is a collection of advice for Bre-that-was AND Bre-that-is. There will be some reminiscing (I’m afraid that’s unavoidable) but I hope more of it will be about the journey not yet taken, the ups and downs and ugly bits of trying to get published. I hope it is helpful. I hope it is honest. I hope some it becomes outdated or flat-out wrong as I grow and learn.

Ready? Here we go.

It begins when you’re bored. It begins three rows back in Mr. Tamashiro’s Macroeconomics class. He gives powerpoint presentations in monotone, gesturing with the clicker in one hand while his eyes flutter half-closed behind his spectacles. It begins with your new spiral notebook with the plum-purple cover, purchased specifically for this class.

Your fellow classmates will find their own ways of surviving this experience: taking notes on a typewriter, cooking waffles in the back row, creating bingo sheets filled with common catchphrases like ‘supply and demand’ and ‘GDP.’

You, however, will write. Of the 70 sheets in your notebook, only the first two will be filled with economics notes and graphs. All else is story. None of the stories are finished of course but that doesn’t matter so much right now. They are beginnings.

Much like this one.

The details may change but this is always where it starts: with the writing. If you learn no other lessons, you must learn this one. No measure of advice nor talent nor desperate wishing will change a blank piece of paper into one with words. This part, the beginning, is all you.