Formatting Dialogue

    All right motherfuckers, I wrote pretty much this entire entry once already but blogspot didn't fucking save it, and because I go through a mild depressive episode whenever I lose 1,000+ words of progress on a thing, the way I'm choosing to deal with it is by angrily rewriting what was lost and punching the fuck out of the save button every paragraph or so.

     [SAVES AGGRESSIVELY]

     So basically the impetus for this post was born of me reading fanfiction and, more specifically, me being unable to finish fanfiction because the fucking dialogue isn't fucking formatted fucking properly.

     [SAVES AGGRESIVELY AND TAKES A SECOND TO BREATHE]

     Okay, I'm gonna try to chill here.  Just.  Give me a second.

     Okay.  Okay okay okay alright alright alright alright alright.  Allkay.  Look:  I get it.  The public school system failed me, too.  I had to learn everything I know about creative writing from copying what I read in books and looking up articles like this one on the internet.  And the things they DID teach me about writing--things like, indent two finger spaces before each paragraph, and use the "hamburger method" of essay writing, and make every paragraph exactly five sentence long--was pretty much entirely bullshit that doesn't get you anywhere after the fifth grade.

     (Even your middle school teachers won't accept an essay written on loose-leaf, wtf are they thinking, really??  I can open any book in the world and the chances that the first paragraph I poke at consists of exactly five sentences is so slim I can't even)

     SO.  BASICALLY.  Let me help you, young writers, because let me tell you, improperly formatted dialogue is a great way to scare off your audience.  Let's start with:

1.  New Speakers

     Every time a new character speaks, slap that enter button before you tickle those quotation marks.  Why, you ask?  Many reasons.  Reasons like avoiding confusion as to who's speaking when, keeping your text away from block form, and creating lots of juicy delicious white space for your beautiful gorgeous readers (like you guys <3 <3 <3)

     (I took a nap and ate some pizza, and because I am like unto a tiny cranky child I feel much more at peace with the world, and with yOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE.  HA!)

     See, when you have a bunch of characters involved in a conversation, and you're smattering in action tags every here and there, it gets hard to follow the train of thought--who's talking when?  To whom?  When does this person stop and the next person start?  This way we can also dispense with some of the dialogue tags that clutter up the walkway, leaving everything more streamlined and aerodynamic.

     Audiodynamic?  Visiodynamic?  Logodynamic?  Bibliodynamic?  Hmmmm.....

     Anyway, gigantic blocks of text also tend to happen when we get multiple speakers in a paragraph, which can cause problems for dyslexic readers, give people headaches, and makes people lose their place far more easily.

     We get enough block text from long descriptive and active paragraphs; when it comes to dialogue, we like to have a break from that, and allow our eyes to cascade smoooothly down the page.

2.  Character Monologues

     When a character goes off on a monologue that lasts more than one paragraph, there are a couple things you can do--literally, a couple.  Two.  Two things.

     You can insert an action tag at the end of the first paragraph or the beginning of the second, or you can press enter, indent, and add another starting quotation mark.

     Now to be clear:  The entire point to reusing opening quotation marks is to indicate that the same character is speaking, so if you cap the first paragraph with ending quotation marks, everyone is going to assume that that character has had their say and that another character has started speaking.  So don't do that (cough cough GINA *glares at friend*).

     Anyway, this is a pretty common mistake that gets made all the time because no one fucking teaches it, so if you haven't figured it out don't get down on yourself.  I only figured it out because I was a voracious reader in my younger days and I learn mostly via visual osmosis.

3.  Dialogue tags

     Dialogue tags, along with action tags, bookend spoken fragments of conversation within your narrative and give attribution to the text.  Specifically, dialogue tags are the ones that say something along the lines of "they said," "they mumbled," "they whined," etc.  They let you know who's talking, and sometimes how they're saying it.

     The tag usually goes at the end of dialogue these days ("I hate the way this runs," he said), but can just as easily go before (he said, "I hate the way this runs.").  That just depends on how you want the line to flow, and is up to personal taste.  You can also chose between "they said" and "said they."  "She said" is traditional, but there's a certain ring to "Said she" that isn't to everyone's tastes, but can really pack a whallop in the right time and place.

     Generally speaking, "said" is the dialogue tag you want to use about ninety percent of the time--it's nothing special, but it gets the job done.  Like water.  Or salt.  Or silica.  But not poisonous like silica.  Anyway, the more you use said, the more meaningful non-said dialogue tags will be.

    Contrary to what public school may or may not have bothered to instill in you, you don't necessarily need to use a dialogue tag--once the flow of a conversation has been established, you can drop it until something happens--like the arrival of a new character or a change in tone--that requires clarification.  You can also use


4.  Action tags

     Action tags, like dialogue tags, let you know who's speaking, but they elect not to add in any of those communication verbs like "asked" or "whispered."

Example:

      Henry held a hand over his stomach.  "I think I'm gonna puke."

      Action tags are simple lines of action that follow, precede, or interrupt dialogue.  They help you avoid Talking Head Syndrome, and if you're following the rule about slapping enter for every new speaker, it allows you to tell or remind your readers who's speaking.

     Just try to make it clear which character is the main focus of the action tag if you make mention of more than one:  "Jenny leaned against Martha and shook her head," makes it pretty clear that we're focused on Jenny.  "Jenny and Martha leaned against each other," is extremely vague, and while it makes for a good line of action, it wouldn't be doing its job if it called itself an action tag.

      Unless maybe both characters were speaking in tandem.  Then it'd be fine, as long as that was previously established. 
   

4 More Basic Formatting Tips

     I spoke before about some formatting pet peeves of mine.  These aren't pet peeves so much as they are just tips that are important that I see a lot of people (especially newbies) overlooking.  It's eleven o'clock at night after a very full day, irritating stuff is on my twitter, my classmates, God love them, don't understand standardized writing structures, and I have a headache, so prepare for callous, good-natured aggression.  Enjoy.

1.  Indentations

     When you start a new paragraph, indent that bitch.
   
     Yeah, yeah, common sense, right?  Only it's not.  I see a lot of people overlooking this crucial step, or doing it wrong--my mother once told me that an indentation is five spaces on the space bar.  It's not; a proper indentation is one slap on the TAB button.

     But if you're on a website *coughcoughBlogspotcoughcough* that doesn't allow for tabing, five spaces will work fine.  In fact, online, indentation may not be necessary at all!  But it can help set each paragraph apart from the last.  However, if you're working on any MS you plan to submit to anyone, slap the tab button.  It'll save you a lot of reformatting later on.


2.  Apostrophes

     Apostrophes are used to denote possession (Mindy's cat) and missing characters ('ey kid!/you can't do this to me), and that's about it.  Often they're used to make a number or a shortening plural (ABC's/That 70's Show), which is a peeve of mine that I try not to let in the house--it's technically correct, at least in the sense that it's been used that way for decades if not centuries, and as a descriptivist it's my duty to bend with the tide of linguistic change.  Still, I try to show that such things are plural just by make the letters big and the "S" small (80s. ABCs).  I'll never change the world's mind, though, so if you do it the other way just keep doing what you're doing.

     Anyway, other than in these rare cases, an apostrophe is never, never to be used on a plural.

     If you're ever wondering whether an apostrophe fits or not, ask yourself if the sentence can be restructured to exclude the "S".  For example, "This house's the best!" can be restructured to, "This house is the best!" so the apostrophe fits.  "The house's door," can be restructured to "The door belonging to the house," so it fits.  But "The houses stood in a row" can't be restructured in any simple way that eliminates the "s" without eliminating the plural.  You'd have to change it to something silly, like, "The house and its compatriots stood in a row."  (and then you haven't eliminated the S, you've just moved it to the word "compatriots," though if there were only two you COULD say "the house and its compatriot stood in a row," but a row is usually more than two and now I'm just overthinking it oops)

     And speaking of "its," a pronoun--she, he, it, they--is the one exception to the "possession=apostrophe" rule.  The only time that a pronoun has an apostrophe is when it's part of a compound word--see the previous example, "it's," which can be broken into "it" and "is."

4.  Double space your shit

     Double-spacing is important, okay.  If you don't select "double" on your line spacing (or 1.5 at the BAREST minimum), it's going to be too cramped, your understanding of how long your work actually is will be thrown off, and your editor won't be happy.
   
     If you want to write it all in single-space and double-space after the fact, that's fine!  That's your prerogative!  But double-spacing needs to be done before you send it off for work--double-spacing helps you avoid massive text walls, makes people less likely to just skim your work, and allows anyone trying to edit or analyze the piece to make notes and corrections between lines, which is super important.

     Just ... double space, okay?  It's the standard submission convention, and single-spacing makes it difficult for others to take your work seriously, because it's one of the first things they teach (or should teach) in a high school English class.

5.  Twelve point TNR font

     Again, if you're looking to submit your work, you need to adhere to standard convention, and standard convention is twelve point Times New Roman font.  Create it in any font you want, but know that before you submit, 99% of the places you things off to are going to ask for 12pt TNR.

     Of course, some companies might prefer Arial or Verdana, or Courier New, or something else that's a little off-the-wall, so make sure you check the preferences of every agent/publishing company you submit to BEFORE you submit, and make any necessary revisions to format.

Some Quick Tips For Writing Scripts

1.  1 Page=1 Minute

     When you write a script, whether for stage or podcast or screenplay or teleplay, the given rule is that one page of dialogue, properly spaced, will yield one minute of stage or screen time.  If there's a good deal of action going on, or the page is full of three-word quips it'll be longer or shorter of course, but generally speaking those instances tend to balance each other out.
     If it's a full page of monologing though, as is the case with something like an audio book or a one-man podcast, my experience is that it tends to be closer to three minutes per page.

2.  Keep An Eye on Length

     There's a reason vines are six seconds; that's the length of a vine.  Vines are like visual haikus, an artform built up around limitations and how to make the best of them.  If you're writing a script for a vine, it's probably only going to be a page long at the most.  If you're writing a short film, it could be two to ten pages long, and if you're writing a full out musical it's probably going to be at least nintey pages, if not more so.
     Know your genre, know your limitations.  Most of the time, people prefer scripts that are sixty-to-ninety minutes for full plays and movies, a hundred and twenty tops, and while I'm certainly not going to hold you to that a hundred percent of the time (Les Mis is like four hours long, The Sound of Music is three and a half, and the first play I ever wrote was a resounding five hundred pages long so I'm one to talk), it's good to keep in mind what you should probably be aiming for.

3.  Write It How It Makes Sense--Format Later

     Formatting with scripts frustrates me.  Primarily because no one uses the American formatting for their finished copies, it's all done with the UK style, yet we're expected to submit using American and--blagh!  Blargh, I say, blargh!
     Regardless, while you'll eventually get the hang of formatting, when you're starting out, write it how it makes sense to you.  As long as it flows smoothly, you can bother with the format when you go to submit it.

4.  Read Scripts

     Read a lot.  So many.  Drown in scripts. It's important that you read scripts to see how different playwrights work their magic, and it'll help you figure out what you want with your work.  Are you more of a modern minimalist?  An Arthur Miller expositionist?  A Shakespearean skelenator?  Somewhere in between?  All of the above?
     Reading scripts helps you know what kinds of things to put in the script, too--what works and what doesn't work.

5.  Read It Aloud

     This is important with all your writing, but ESPECIALLY with script writing.  For the love of all your Gods, read your words aloud, get a group of actors together if you can so they can play off each other.  More than with any other written piece, a script needs to flow, it needs to sound natural in the mouths of the speakers.  It can look beautiful on paper, but that won't do you any good once it's in the mouths of your actors.

     Now go forth, my burgeoning playwrights, and bring your dreams to life!

Fixing Talking Head Syndrome

What it is:

     "Talking Head Syndrome," as it's known in literary circles, is a condition characterized by the metaphorical detachment of your character from a physical form during dialogue or monologues, especially if world-building or info-dumping is involved.  Essentially, the monologue or dialogue goes on for so long with so few indicators of what's actually happening in the scene that the reader gets lost and confused and, worst of all, bored.

Why it's bad:

     Talking Head Syndrome results in a couple different things, but most importantly, it's boring.
     When THS creeps in, all that's left is words, words, words--words that usually aren't that interesting, don't hold our attention, and make us want to skip over everything to get back to the action.  We lose track of what's going on with the characters, where they are physically, emotionally, etc, and you lose opportunities to really get in touch with the character, advance the plot further, or entertain the audience.

How to fix it:

     There are a couple things you can do to try to cure your MS of Talking Head Syndrome.

• Action Tags:  Action tags are essentially what they sound like; the action that goes on during and between dialogue, and they might be the simplest way to cure your THS.  Instead of saying, "she said," which is a dialogue tag, you cap the end of a sentence (or interrupt the sentence, when it flows that way) with action.  

  For example, instead of, "'I hate this,' she said," you'd use, "'I hate you.'  She put down the clock and crossed to Henry.  

  This is a relatively quick way to let your reader know what's going on while your characters are chatting, which, when done right, won't interrupt the conversation and will keep the details clear in your audience's heads.  Plus, it's more interesting to read.
• Dialogue Tags:  Dialogue tags ("she said," "he asked," "they inquired," etc) are the Action Tag's annoying cousin.  A necessary cousin, who isn't always annoying, but can be.  These don't help terribly much with THS (you can load your MS up with them and still have talking heads as far as the eye can see), but they do help the reader keep track of who's speaking at any given time.  And not knowing who's speaking is a dangerous side effect of THS.
• Slash and Burn:  Another solution is to cut down your dia/monologues.  Instead of having those long-winded passages of speech that take up six pages, you can make it more of a back-and-forth to break it down into more manageable chunks, which can help create space for action and narration.

      Talking Head Syndrome is tricky; it's one of those issues that just keeps coming back around and around and around.  I'm 99.99999% certain that there are talking heads somewhere in your first draft, because it's endemic, and it's natural; when you get in the dialogue flow it's hard to break out of it.  It's not spilled milk, it's nothing to cry about, just try to keep things interesting, and remember to balance your dialogue, action, and narration, lest you end up with more of a play than a novel.

Am I Allowed To Write?

     Feeling like we're allowed to write can be hard sometimes, especially for new writers, so today I'm answering a couple commonly-asked questions about what it takes to be a writer (in vivid and graphic detail, of course).

How Old Do I Need To Be to Start Writing?

     Any age, so long as you have at least a basic understanding of language.

Do I Need To Have a Degree to Be a Writer?

     No.  No degree or certificate is necessary; just a love of words.

Do I Need Permission to Write?

     No.

What If I Feel Like I Need Permission?

     Then I am giving you permission.  Now go, friend; write your masterpiece.

But--

     Shhhhhh.  No buts.  Only writing now.

Wait.  I Write!  Am I a Writer?

     Aye, comrade.  Welcome!  May your days be write-tastic and your hard drive never fail!

The Importance of Fanfiction

   The first story I ever wrote was called "The Hecatense Goose;" I was three and could neither read nor write, so my mother wrote it down and it was eventually lost.  I have no idea what the story was about.
     But my second story was a series of scribbles that told a tale of Peter Pan's post-Hook adventures, and my third was a sequel to the then-unfinished Series of Unfortunate Events books.  At the time I did not, of course, know anything about fanfiction or copywright laws, but since then I've done a lot of growing as a writer--yet still fanfiction calls to me.
     It's a polarizing issue.  As a once-B-rated-star of the Megamind fandom, I am very biased in favor of fanfiction, because it's fun, it's flattering (I can't think of anything better than having such a wide fan base that they take inspiration from and write about your world and characters!  How great would that be??  ((Super great is how))), and reading/writing it can help you grow as a writer.
     Here are a few ways it's beneficial to a writer.

     Fanfiction can....


1.  Be great place to start

     At any level of writing skill fanfiction is great practice, but it's especially good for beginners, since it allows you to create stories with pre-established characters in a pre-established world, often in a pre-established style, which gets you comfortable with developing plot, using detail to your advantage, and using correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and format.
     Once you're comfortable with the writing basics, it's easy to rocket through the ranks, stepping up one rung at a time rather than going in all at once--you start deviating in style, then move the characters from one world to another, and finally start creating OCs (usually either using author inserts or child-of-PC characters at first).  Before you know it, you're creating fanfiction that's only tangentially related to the original story--sometimes barely related at all.
     When writing original content there's a very sharp learning curve--you essentially go from zero to three-sixty in nothing flat, but fanfiction allows you to build at a pace you're comfortable with, without feeling pressured to be your best most original self right off the bat.

2.  Offer a source of feedback

     One great thing about fanfiction is that, at least when published online, it offers you a source of feedback through the fandom.  When you do well, this means instant gratification, which can make you feel amazing, but arguably the more valuable form of feedback comes in the form of constructive criticism and suggestions from the audience.  You learn a lot about spelling and grammar--always useful--and even more about story structure and character development.
     Whether what you're writing is offensive, or just poorly executed, it's always nice to have eyes on your words, people who can tell you when your characterization is inconsistent or when you need to plug a major plothole or if your "super secret" ending/plot twist is visible from a mile away.  And while beta readers and critique partners are great after the fact, feedback from the community usually occurs as you publish each chapter, which allows you to make changes as you go forward rather than having to double back--and by implementing changes as you go forward, you'll remember to implement them in future projects, too.

3.  Be inspiring

     Fanfiction is great even if you don't write it.  Just reading fanfiction can be inspiring, as I mentioned here; good fanfiction makes you want to run out and write a story based on X idea or Y character arc, and bad fanfiction makes you want to write something amazing just to prove to yourself that you can do it.  It's a good idea.  You should do it.

4.  Give you a sense of accomplishment

     Fanfiction is, I find, relatively easy to produce--there's a lot of work that's already been done by the original creator, which means that a lot of your characters don't need descriptions, a lot of places don't need explaining, and a lot of events are already common fandom knowledge--yet there's still a TON of work that goes into making a truly quality fic.  When you finish a fic, or a fic chapter, it feels amazing--when people respond positively, you feel like you're on cloud fucking eleven; it helps with your sense of self and it increases your confidence, and when you feel good about yourself it becomes a lot easier to make progress on the next or concurrent project.
     Progress begets progress, so sometimes it's great to use a little project (like a fanfic oneshot) to jump-start a larger project--like a couple thousand word down payment on your new MS.
     Plus, again, you feel really great, and who doesn't like feeling really great?

5.  Community

     Because the entire basis of fanfiction is that you're writing in a world someone else has created, the people you're trying to reach are already fans of what you're watching/reading, and, as fandom flocks together just like birds of paper feathers, you're not just pitching to individuals but to a ready-made community.
     One of the best ways to become a fully realized member of a fandom community (and through doing so find a place where you belong, people to help you in your quest for perfection, friends to see you through until the end) is to write fanfiction (or make fanart but, while I am very enthusiastic about art, this is not an art blog).  The more obsessive you are about a fandom, the more fanfiction becomes something akin to a need, and the best fillers of those needs are gods on high for a fandom nerd.  If you're fanficcing on the same account where you present your real life persona, it also creates a community that revolves around your work, which can be a great marketing platform when you start launching original content.

6.  Make someone else's day

     You know you have done your job as a writer when someone tells you that you have made their day.  The only thing that even comes close to describing the feeling is "euphoria."  This, like before, creates an increased sense of self, a greater feeling of self-confidence, and a driving desire to continue working.  Writing is an addiction, and like all addictions, the more you do it, the more you want to do it--and the more people agree with your addiction, the better it feels to give in.
     Also...

7.  Fear of disappointing your fans keeps you trucking along at a good speed

     One of the things I have trouble with is meeting my own deadlines.  This is really bad for a writer.  I do, however, do very well at meeting deadlines when someone else is waiting for the update with bated breathe.
     When I was especially absorbed in the fanfiction world, I could pump out several chapters a week in a good month--sometimes several a day, because when you know people are enjoying your work it, again, encourages you to work more, but it also encourages you to work toward not disappointing them.  The last thing you want when you have fans is to lose them.  Worse than just losing them is losing them not to your own incompetence, but to laziness, of all things.  It's definitely an incentive, and if you smarten up and get organized with your attempts to deliver quality content at death-defying speeds (I didn't), you can put the same updating strategies you use with fanfiction on your writing.
     Maybe you have a flow chart, or a friend you can submit chapters to the same way you'd submit to your chosen hosting website--whichever way, organization in one realm of your writing life should definitely lend itself to organization in others, and as they say, an organized life is an organized mind (or something like that), which lends itself to productivity.

8.  No limits, no consequences

     Addendum:  There are no limits in original writing either, and there are some minor consequences to writing (and publishing) bad fanfiction.
     hOWEVER; it's easier to write without limits when you're playing with someone else's characters.  It feels like there's less to lose--you can't screw it up, because the worst thing that happens if you do is you need to write something else, or maybe apologize for a few mistakes.  You're more likely to follow tangents and do silly, seemingly unnecessary things, or kill off or bring back characters at will, playing with the rules when it seems convenient (or refusing to ever play with the rules, whichever isn't your default), which can be goldmines for your creativity.   Just because it's not being used in a "real" project now doesn't mean you won't use it later.
     There are a lot of pressures fanfiction allows you to let go of, which is important practice for when you need to forget about society while you write your magnum opus.  One of the best things you can do for your writing is allow your creativity to run wild, because you can always--and should always--edit later.

     The long and the short of it is, fanfiction is amazing.  Use it as an outlet, use it as practice, use it just for fun--any way you dice it, it's worth whatever time you do--or don't!--want to put into it.

Salutations!

     Greetings, internet!  Let me inaugurate my first writing blog with a fond hello to all the writers, artists, hopefuls, and to-bes out there!  It’s hard to collect my thoughts for this post, but I think it’s appropriate to ring in the blog with an entry about beginnings—specifically, a writer’s beginnings.

     I know that there are a lot of aspiring writers out there--people who desire to set pen to paper and pour their souls out to the world--and that many of them are afraid to do so.

     It's natural to be afraid.  Really!  We all got scared, especially when facing down something so personal--there is no part of writing that isn't, honestly, because the art of the written word is derived from us and us alone.  We take our thoughts, our feelings, characters we become attached to, storylines we can't live without, and we throw it out at the world, hoping it will strike someone's fancy, and that our audience will come to us with affection in their eyes rather than disgust.  I've been writing novels since I was nine, and I'm still afraid.  So let me tell you why you don't have to be.

     I was not afraid when I was nine, not of anything.  I was top of my class, I loved books, and damn it, I was going to be a famous author if it killed me.  For Christmas I received a little green notebook with a few pretty flowers on the cover and said, "The time is now."  I wrote my first novel over the course of maybe six months, and I thought it was amazing.

     I typed it up on the computer, single-spaced, unformatted, with space-bar indents and a crude understanding of all things grammar--they don't teach that in school like they used to, I'm told. It totaled out at ten or twelve chapters, coming to forty-two pages in all; the main character was literally myself, only a superhero, and all her supports were direct copies of my best friends and our pets, also superheroes.  The villains were bullies from school who had no motive except to fuck up my life who somehow woke up a dragon sleeping under the school, which the protagonist befriended by pulling a thorn out of its foot, and in the end all of the bullies were frozen in blocks of ice and carted off by the police while the heroes basked in the glow of the commoners' praise.

     Oh, and in the middle, there was a three-page digression where the protagonist discovered a new species of rainbow-colored weasel and set them to breed for the sake of science.  Beautiful writing right there, just wonderful.

     Okay, so I'm sure you're asking why I'm telling you this right now.  Do I just want to ramble about a scrapped story?  No.  No, that's not it.  So what's the point?  The point is, it.  Sucked.  Ass.  And I didn't die!

     As I started to realize how far from ready it was for the public eye, I was frustrated, yes, and I wanted to make it perfect, only I didn't yet possess the skill set.  Young, undisciplined, and a little put off, I didn't dwell too long.  Recognizing my limits, I dutifully filed it away on a flash drive and promised to be back for it later, then moved on to the next thing, absolutely certain that it would be a thousand times better.  I've tried to come back several times but, ultimately, if it will ever be worth reviving, it hasn't been yet.  That's okay.  I failed, and that's okay.  Better than okay, it was what I needed!  I can learn from that, I can look at everything I did wrong and I can say, "I won't do that again," because I know, first-hand, that it doesn't work, and there's no authority to spite in trying.  There's only me.

     My point here is; start.  Whatever it is, no matter how old you are, how much you've read, what you want to accomplish, how complicated your story is--start.  Once you begin, you'll find it's hard to stop.  As a stone rolls down a hill, it gathers momentum, and the more momentum available, the more force it takes to halt the object in motion.  Our brains are wired to be more likely to finish something if we start it, and we're more likely to learn from our own fuck-ups than from someone else's.  Skill, finesse, experience, they're all important, but you will never have them if you don't put pen to paper and write.  Write, finish, and learn.

     Seven and a half years later, and the very worst thing that first, awful, despicable manuscript gave me is something to laugh at when there's nothing else to think about.  Three pages of rainbow-colored weasels?  What was nine-year-old me on?

     You don't need to be perfect the first time.  No, let me rephrase that; you will not be perfect the first time, but that's what the revising and editing steps are for!  That's what practice is about!  It's why you read these kinds of articles in the first place!  So go pick up a notebook or open a word processor, and start honing your skill.  You don't have to be afraid--more importantly, you don't have to let your fears consume you.  The only way to finish is to start, and the only way to start is to start.  So start!  There's no one to impede you but yourself.

     To beginnings!