Start Small: Moving From Notebook to Story

In the latest Glimmer Train bulletin, Susan Jackson Rogers has written a brief essay on the writing life: “Closing the Gap: Moving from Notebook to Story.” She discusses how stories get their beginnings and gain traction:

Each time, I have to remember: Start small. Why doesn’t “starting small” feel like real writing? Really, there isn’t any other way to start. … It’s embarrassing to admit how long it’s taken me to realize that the whole trick is this: close the gap between notes and draft. At the beginning of a writing session, if I don’t know where to start, I go to the notes, and transfer the useful ones to the proper place in the draft I’m working on. …  I used to think, “but this isn’t real writing” (by which I meant that euphoric seven-longhand-pages-in-one-sitting kind of writing). Now I wonder what that could possibly mean. I am writing. That’s as real as writing gets.

Read the entire essay over at Glimmer Train.

Also in the latest Glimmer Train bulletin:

Acting on Faith by Aria Beth Sloss
Your Sanctuary by Steve Adams
Apocalypse Not by Christopher Marnach

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