Part #5 of my freelance writing tips series.
Despite my best intentions, I did nothing useful today. I made a few phone calls, collated a few notes, sent a few emails. Anything but face the freelance article that needed writing. It sat there, looming large, dark, silent, brooding.
It wasn’t the Muse I was waiting on. It wasn’t a format, or a fact, or a quote. It was a beginning.
Find the beginning for a story and you’ll find the story. I’ve written before about armpits and angles. About navigating your rowboat in a straight line through a sea of ideas. All of which is just fabulous in theory. But sometimes it just doesn’t happen.
So what’s a girl to do?
You start with what you know. What I know, for this particular story, is the middle. I have already decided that it will be an intro/q&a/ending format. I don’t know the intro. I don’t know the ending. But the middle – well, that’s a matter of wrangling my questions and quotes into submission.
This I can do.
Hopefully, once it’s done, an intro and an ending will have suggested itself. Simple, really.
Now all I have to do is to do it.
Would you love more freelance writing tips and advice? Check out my book So You Want To Be A Writer: How To Get Started (While You Still Have A Day Job), co-authored with Valerie Khoo and based on our top-rating podcast.
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