Annie Dillard's Advice on Getting Started: "Tear Up the Runway"

For many of us, the hardest part of writing is getting started. Even after we exhaust our rituals of procrastination (checking email, playing FreeCell, resizing icons), there's the challenge of crafting the perfect introduction--smart, snappy, accurate, and attention-getting. And all the while our minds seem to be as blank as the screen we're gazing at.

In fact, trying to craft the perfect introduction could be our biggest mistake at this point. Tinkering with syntax and searching for the precise word may turn out to be just another distracting ritual. Getting started should be our first goal. Getting it right can come later.

Essayist and poet Annie Dillard explains why, in a first draft, an imperfect introduction (clumsy, wordy, boring, and vague) might be the smartest and most efficient way to get our writing off the ground:

Usually you will have to rewrite the beginning--the first quarter or third of whatever it is. Don't waste time polishing this; you'll have to take a deep breath and throw it away anyway, once you finish the work and have a clearer sense of what it is about. Tear up the runway; it helped you take off, and you don't need it now. This is why some writers say it takes "courage" to write. It does.
("Introduction: Notes for Young Writers," in In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005)

So take heart and start writing. Later you can revise and make it better.

More About Getting Started:

• Getting Started With Freewriting
• Getting Started With Brainstorming
• Writers on Writing: Overcoming Writer's Block