Starting from One Word: Writing! |
Before starting this article, let me tell you about my friend who works as a journalist at a TV station in Jakarta, Indonesia.
He admitted that it would be impossible for him to work in that job all his life. He planned a change, just being in the field for exclusive news coverage. Most of the time will be used for writing. The novelist is the choice of his profession later.
Smart choice, especially considering he had an accident when the coverage that made his leg permanently deformed. There is no adequate compensation from the company where he works. His ideas as a novelist are in line with his profession as a journalist who plays in the ocean of words, although as a TV journalist who relies on visual power, he only writes short, in capital letters, without the semicolon anyway.
Although he has set his goals, this friend has not yet begun. Not even one word was born for a long novel, let alone a chapter. He felt he could start five years ago. Not today, but right now ...
Similar stories have often been heard, with various professional backgrounds. People easily set goals, develop authorship plans, have brilliant ideas, conflict and strong characters for a novel. Even people like that can tell their stories interestingly. People are silent, reverent hearing the story. Curious to wait for the continuation, and surprised with a plot in each section.
But all of that is just verbal speech that is soon forgotten. Even if there are two pieces left in the memory cells, everything is no longer intact like a puzzle piece that must be rearranged.
Starting is a strength that must be possessed. When to start?
it's not this month, let alone five years to come. Nor this week, not even today. First word, first sentence, first chapter must be born right now. The next strength is to maintain consistency so that the first novel is born this year.
The obstacles that come are definitely more than the vocabulary in the head. After starting and not stopping before ending, eating "obstacle" is the first word that is lost from memory. After the novel was born, obstacles soon became memories that sometimes made us realize how weak we were in the past when facing the pebbles of life.
As great as any, as original as any, an idea or ideas will stop limited to ideas. A simple idea that continues with the first word, first sentence, first paragraph, is far better than a brilliant idea that does not continue with the first word.
Remember, bad writing that has been typed on a laptop or that has been posted here or anywhere, will be better than good writing but only limited to wish. Bad writing still has a chance to edit it, but we can't do anything if one word isn't born yet.
Only strong people can put an end to what has already begun. Only strong people can get rid of laziness and boredom, the two main enemies in the writing task, as well as in other fields. We have the choice not to regret it in the future by starting to write this second and finish it thousands of seconds from now.
Well, how and where to start? How to maintain consistency so that the first word and the first sentence do not become the last sentence? []
