Writing doesn’t begin with a blank page

If you know you need to write something and you’re struggling with where to start, a big blank page sitting in front of you can be very intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

For me, notes are the key. Before I sit down to write anything, I already have a few notes put together for what I’m going to write about. In looking at my notes for this particular post, the note was created about a week ago and now I’m sitting down to write — but it’s easy to get started because I have those notes to help get me off the ground.

Related to note taking, here are some thoughts from Sonke Ahrens in his book “ How to Take Smart Notes “. He starts off by removing the idea of the struggle:

They struggle because they believe, as they are made to believe, that writing starts with a blank page.

It’s echoed in a quote that he shares from Armin Nassehi, who said:

The white sheet of paper — or today: the blank screen — is a fundamental misunderstanding.

It really just comes down to note-taking. Simply having a rough idea and a few quick notes to get started makes it 100x easier to get rolling. Here’s what Ahrens said about that:

And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the…