A Writer from the Beginning
I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. My love affair with words began in elementary school, when most kids were dreaming about recess or lunch and I was dreaming about stories. I can still picture myself, small, quiet, and eager, leaning over a sheet of lined notebook paper, gripping a pencil a little too tightly, and feeling the rush of possibility that came every time a blank page stared back at me. While other children fidgeted through lessons, waiting for the bell, I waited for the moment the teacher would say, “Take out your journals,” as though she had just granted me the key to a secret world.
At one point I even created a whole series of detective tales starring my Banana Man pencil-top eraser, a tiny rubber-yellow master sleuth who solved crimes all over the school and playground. This little detective had a personality all his own: sharp-eyed, slightly sarcastic, and endlessly determined. Banana Man cracked the case if the swings went missing, if someone stole the good markers from the art room, or if mysterious footprints showed up near the tetherball court. Every new mystery was a universe to explore, and every solution felt like a small triumph.
My classmates couldn’t wait for the next installment. They’d crowd around my desk the way kids once waited for the next Superman comic to hit the shelves. It was the first time I realized that stories, my stories, could bring people together, spark conversations, and create moments of joy amid the everyday routines of childhood. Their excitement fed my imagination, and my imagination fed my desire to keep writing.
Looking back, I realize those stories were more than childhood play. They were the beginning of a lifelong vocation. Through those early inventions, I discovered that writing was a way of seeing, a way of noticing details others overlooked, a way of making sense of the world and of dreams too large to hold silently inside. Writing became my way of exploring imagination, wrestling with meaning, and creating beauty where there was none.
The Discipline of a Thousand Words
As I grew older, writing never left me. It followed me into adolescence, into adulthood, into every stage of life. I grew not only as a storyteller but as an editor, a companion to other writers, and an encourager of those who felt the spark but didn’t yet know how to feed it. I discovered that some people carry stories quietly, unsure how to bring them to the page, and one of my joys has been helping them learn to trust their own voices.
The best advice I ever received, and now pass along whenever someone asks how to begin, came from a neighbor friend many years ago. He was a gifted writer, the kind who carried stories around in his bones, and he told me something simple that changed everything:
“Write one thousand words every day, no matter what!”
At first, the number felt monumental. A thousand words? Every day? But he smiled and explained that it didn’t matter whether those words were brilliant or mediocre, profound or ridiculous. He said words were like water in a well: the more often you drew from the well, the fresher the water became.
It didn’t matter whether he was writing a short story, a blog post, a laundry list, a poem, or complete nonsense. What mattered was the practice: sitting down, putting pen to paper or fingers to keys, and moving the hand that trains the mind. Writing, he insisted, was both a craft and a discipline, and discipline was what kept the craft alive when inspiration grew quiet.
I took up that discipline, and I’ve kept it ever since. A thousand words a day, even when it feels like pushing a stalled car uphill. There are days when the writing flows like water down a mountain stream, and days when it drips out one hesitant drop at a time. Yet over time, it shaped me.
My writing improved, not because I waited for inspiration but because I showed up faithfully, even on the days when the words felt stubborn or flat. My mind and body learned the rhythm of the craft, and discipline became a kind of doorway to creativity. I learned that showing up is often more important than feeling ready, and that the muse is far more likely to appear when I am already at the desk.
An Invitation to Begin
If you’ve ever felt the nudge to write or if you’ve wanted to but didn’t know where to start, let me offer the same encouragement I once received:
Start by showing up. Start small. Start daily.
You don’t need a grand idea.
You don’t need the perfect story.
You don’t even need confidence.
What you need is a willingness to begin.
Write a paragraph about the weather.
Write a memory.
Write something that made you laugh today.
Write a character sketch.
Write nonsense and let it be nonsense.
Write a prayer.
Write a grocery list if that’s all that comes but write it with attentiveness, with intention.
Because something remarkable happens when you commit to writing regularly: eventually, something inside you will shift. The words will begin to loosen. The imagination will notice you’re paying attention. And the stories, the real ones, the ones waiting quietly in your heart, will start to come forward.
You may discover stories you didn’t know you carried. You may uncover old wounds that want to be healed, old memories that want to be honored, or new hopes that want to be formed. Writing has a way of doing that, it opens doors we didn’t know were closed.
Writing isn’t magic. It’s muscle and mercy. It’s a habit of returning to the page again and again until the practice itself cultivates creativity and courage. And over time, as your discipline deepens, your voice will emerge with more clarity, strength, and honesty than you ever imagined.
So write.
Write because it shapes you.
Write because it frees you.
Write because there is something inside you that only you can say.
And if you ever doubt that your writing matters, remember this: once upon a time, even a tiny Banana Man detective made a whole classroom wait eagerly for the next page.
And your stories, whatever form they take, might do the same for someone else.
Oh, look at that, one thousand eighty-one words already!
Love,
+Brian