The idea of the beginning is a bad one to start with. All beginnings are a beginning, not the beginning. Every day when you wake up is a beginning. When you step foot outside, when you open a box, when you lock eyes with a person, and even when you enter dreamland every night are all beginnings as much as they are endings and middles.

When you sit down to write, the worst thing I think you can do to yourself is to think of coming up with the beginning. Instead, start with what strikes you. What is interesting to you right now? It can be a scene at the end, a snapshot from the middle, or maybe it will end up as the beginning.

True story: everything I’ve ever finished writing was not written in a linear fashion, from front to back. Every journal I have you will find part finished pages, blank pages, and finished pages at what seem like random.

A beginning blank page can intimidate. There’s a pressure to put down the ‘right thing’ that will set the tone for everything else. If I mess up, everything that comes after is crap, as if writing is like baking a cake. It’s not. With writing, you can rise your cake before you even mix your ingredients together. That is part of the magic of this medium.

So I dare you to open up to a place in the middle and make a mark, even just one. Maybe start scribing on the second to last page. Even better, in this digital realm, write without knowing where exactly it falls into time, just that it exists and you are creating.