Why You Should Stop Waiting for the Muse and Start Typing Anyway
If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “I’ve always wanted to write a book but I’m not really a writer,” congratulations. You’ve already achieved the perfect blend of self-doubt and optimism that every author starts with. I think you have just about the ideal level of delusion required to start a book. Or a simple story. Or just a scene.
I didn’t start writing because I felt ready. No one’s ever ready. I started because, after decades in advertising, helping corporations find their voice, I wanted to see if I could find my own. Preferably one that didn’t require an unnecessarily complicated brand deck, a focus group, or a three-hour autopsy where I had to justify that what I’d written was on strategy.
If you want to learn how to write a novel, or at least figure out how you can start writing a book without a degree in literature or a muse on retainer, here’s the good news. You don’t need permission. You just need curiosity, persistence, and a tolerance for disappointment roughly equal to your caffeine intake.
Forget “Talent.” Start With Curiosity
There’s a myth that writers are touched by divine lightning, scribbling effortlessly while lesser mortals binge Netflix. But it’s not true. Most of us are ordinary people who got suspiciously interested in our own daydreams and decided to document them.
If you’ve ever narrated your life in your head (“I can’t believe I said that.”) you’re already halfway to writing fiction. The rest is just learning to turn your thoughts into stories. I hope that much at least saves you from Googling: “how to start writing a book when you have no experience.”
Curiosity, on the other hand, shows up every day, hair unwashed but ready to work. Be curious about people. Why they lie, what they regret, how they somehow survive themselves. That’s not just creative writing. That’s anthropology with better dialogue.
The Blank Page Isn’t Mocking You (Much)
If you’ve ever stared at a blank Word document and felt the cursor blink with quiet judgment, you’ve met your first editor. Fear. Every writer has it.
Advertising writing taught me to fear silence. Every space had to sell. But writing fiction isn’t about filling space. It’s closer to something like finding shape. And that shape comes one clumsy sentence at a time.
Here’s a trick that took me some time to discover. Lower your standards. Write badly on purpose. Give yourself permission. Let the first draft be terrible. You can’t edit what doesn’t exist. And you can’t find your voice until it trips over itself a few times.
Perfection is the enemy of creativity. Or as I like to think of it, perfection is that smug friend who never writes anything but loves giving feedback.
Writing Is Work (and That’s the Fun Part)
People say, “I want to write a book,” the way they say, “I want to get in shape.” The desire alone doesn’t do the push-ups. Writing requires routine. Commitment. And stubbornness bordering on pathology.
There’s no secret. Just a keyboard, a clock, and the willingness to sit through the part where you’d rather clean grout. The only difference between someone who wants to write and someone who does is persistence.
Stephen King said it well: “The writer must not merely write, he must keep on writing, even when the world has turned against him.” Writing isn’t magic. It work. It’s a job. A strange, solitary, deeply rewarding job that pays mostly in self-doubt punctuated by the occasional fleeting moment of accomplishment.
If you’re wondering how to start writing every day, try this: set a time and protect it like it’s sacred. You’ll be amazed at what accumulates when you stop waiting for permission.
You Already Know How to Tell a Story
Here’s the thing. You don’t need to learn storytelling. You already live it. You’ve experienced conflict, irony, heartbreak, humour, redemption. You’ve replayed conversations in your head, edited your lines, and imagined better outcomes. You’ve been practicing what literary people call “narrative craft” your entire life.
Start small. Write a scene from your day. Then rewrite it from someone else’s perspective. Before long, you’ll have characters talking back. That’s when you know you’re doing it right.
Every novel starts with “what if?” What if this person made that choice? What if this truth were slightly bent? What if I actually sat down and wrote it?
That’s the secret to how to write a story. It’s curiosity, not genius.
Your Voice Is the Point
Many new writers think they have to sound like a real writer. They mimic the authors they admire. To paraphrase TS Eliot, “Good writers borrow; great writers steal.” And that’s fine. It’s how we learn. But eventually, the act becomes exhausting, and your real voice wanders in, uninvited but honest.
Your voice is your advantage. It’s the sum of your quirks, rhythms, and worldview. Readers can smell authenticity. They don’t want perfection, they want presence.
If you’re writing your first book, remember this. Readers don’t need another Hemingway or Atwood. They need you, unedited, unfiltered, human.
Doubt Means You’re Doing It Right
Every writer hates their own work at some point. This is not failure; it’s progress. It means your taste is catching up to your ambition. The only cure is more writing.
You’ll rewrite. You’ll cringe. You’ll wonder why you started. Then, one day, you’ll read a passage and think, maybe this isn’t absolutely terrible. That’s your brain rewarding you for surviving.
If you’re struggling with writing motivation, let this inspire you. Nobody cares as much as you think they do. That’s liberating. You’re free to fail, experiment, and keep going.
The Point Isn’t to Be a Writer
It’s to see what happens when you try.
You don’t need a cabin, a scarf, or a tragic backstory. You just need curiosity and stubbornness. Here’s one secret I learned. Writing isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about returning to yourself.
So go on. Write the bad draft. The messy one. The one that makes you blush. You can fix it later. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, you’ll have done something astonishingly rare. You’ll have turned a thought into a story.
Eventually the Blank Page Becomes a Friend
When I started writing, I treated the blank page like an adversary. Now I see it as a dance partner. Together, we’re awkward, unpredictable. On good days, I can get it to follow my lead.
If you’ve ever thought, “I’m not really a writer,” good. Neither was I. Neither were most of us. We just started anyway.
And somewhere between the first paragraph and the last, we stopped worrying about whether we belonged, and started writing like we did.
For more reflections on creative writing, how to write a novel, and the self-publishing journey behind my ongoing fiction series, The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, visit my YouTube channel. Coming soon.