Start the Book. The Rest Will Come.

Why Not…You have nothing to lose

1. your inside voice is holding you back

When people say they want to write a book, what they’re really asking is, “What if I’m not good enough?”
Trust me — every writer has thought that. I certainly did.

I’ve lived through the good (those lightning-bolt ideas), the bad (learning how even to write a sentence), and the ugly (five years of writer’s block so thick I thought I’d never get out).

But here’s what I learned:

2. The only mistake is not starting

If you have a story tugging at you, pull back the curtain and write the first sentence. Then the next. Use a road map like Save the Cat, trust the beats, and let yourself be a beginner. You’ll be amazed at how far you go.

And if you stick with me on this blog, I’ll walk you through everything I learned — the insights, the detours, the mistakes, and the magic.

Because writing may not look pretty at first…
But it’s worth every good, bad, and ugly step along the way.

3. You need a roadmap

For me, that road map was Save the Cat Writes a Novel. Only it arrived late.

I didn’t discover that book until about six years ago, which means I was already deep into writing Flight 987 when I finally stumbled into the promised land. That book walks you through every aspect of story structure, step by step. If you simply write down the beats and add a couple of sentences under each, suddenly you have an outline.

And that outline?
Those are the bones of your novel.

Once the bones are there, you can layer in the flesh, the blood, the skin—everything that brings a story to life.

4. Now add the flesh, muscle, blood, sweat, and tears

When I started writing Flight 987, I had never written anything before. I didn’t set out to be a writer. I wasn’t chasing a dream. I just had these ideas—whole stories—that would appear out of nowhere. I’d tell people my story ideas. I hadn’t bought the notebook or the pen yet, and everyone said the same thing: “That is really good.”

Honestly, I thought so too.

These stories had a life of their own, and they wanted to be born. But me? I had zero interest in writing a book.
(Okay, that’s not entirely true.)

When I was about 29, I started writing a movie. I had maybe ten pages before I abandoned it because I met a boyfriend. I didn’t have direction back then, so it probably wouldn’t have gone very far anyway.

Fast-forward years later. I read a yearly horoscope that said:

“Anything you start right now will be successful.”

That was it.
That was the push.
I decided, I have nothing to lose.
I’m going to write one of my stories.

5. 🌱 The Hard Part Nobody Warns You About:

Then I actually sat down to write… and very quickly realized I had no idea how to write a book.
Or a chapter.
Or even a sentence that didn’t make me cringe.

So I found and took an online “how to write a novel” class. It was exactly what I needed to get started.

The first big issue I ran into was something every new writer experiences:
My characters started taking over. Imagine your imagined people taking off in their own direction. It was bizarre, and I truly believed I had lost my mind.

When I explained this to my instructor, he talked me down and said, “This happens to all writers. You just need to take control back.” Easier said than done. Looking back, this is where I should have read Save the Cat, because I needed an outline. I can’t stress this enough: Less is more. A simple outline will save you so much time and anguish.
And then the worst thing happened:

❌ Writer’s block. For FIVE years.

I didn’t make progress.
Nothing stuck.

I had no idea which direction to go in. And I found many, many rabbit holes that overwhelmed me. Once again, an outline would have solved this whole thing…did I mention how important an outline is?

I hired a coach. It wasn’t too expensive, and she sent me in the right direction. We had weekly phone call meetings (before Zoom). I followed her lead, and I finally made some progress.

Then I did something that changed everything.

I joined a writing group that met at this dive bar, The College Inn, every Monday night to read and critique each other’s work. I learned so much from that group. I owe them a ton of thanks because without them, I never would have finished…Because…the moderator introduced me to you guessed it…Save the Cat. It was so powerful that I rewrote my book using the method, and that made the biggest difference I could hope for.

Final Thoughts

And…well, I did it. Can you believe I did it? I have a hard time believing that myself. I’m a published author, dyslexic, ADHD, anxiety-ridden Hypochondriac. Super bad speller (thank god for spell check). Have you ever spelled a word so completely wrong that spell check doesn’t recognize anything you feed it? It’s very time-consuming when you constantly have to respell every word…anyway.

My point in all this is that if you have an idea and it keeps coming back to you, that is the universe telling you to write it down. And you can do it! If I could do it, you can do it!