The trick to getting started with writing, and keeping at it regularly, is to believe that you're practicing; that what you're writing is just for you.

And in the beginning, that's true, in a way. You don't have to worry about being original. This is all practice, so no one needs to see how bad or repetitive or unoriginal or [insert negative adjective you tell yourself] your work is. We all are bad at it before we become good at it.

Whatever it is—whatever it is, do it! Sure there are going to be mistakes. Everything’s not going to be perfect. I’ve written thousands of words that no one will ever see. I had to write them in order to get rid of them.

Ray Bradbury

Your first writing challenge

When I started writing regularly, a month before I turned 16, I gave myself a simple challenge: write 500 words every day for 30 days. It was the summer before I would start Class 11, so I had a couple of months of free time in hand, which I decided to devote to finally becoming a writer.

Why 500 words and why 30 days? I don't have my diaries from those years, but I was probably thinking of challenges like the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which takes place every November. Writers all over the world try to write a novel in 30 days. (The average word count of novels is 50,000 words. Spread out over a month, you'd need to write at least 1,667 words per day to finish on time.) I was also probably thinking of the daily word counts of famous writers, which varied from 500 words (Ernest Hemingway) to 2,000 words (Stephen King).

Before this self-imposed challenge, I'd made some attempts at writing every day, because from all the reading I'd done on the internet, I'd come to understand that writers wrote every day. I had to do the same, then. But "write every day" is a vague goal. What do you write about? Where do you write? How many pages should you fill?

Because my goal wasn't specific, I failed to write regularly. I remember one night where I'd gone to bed, then recalled that I hadn't written anything that day, so I took out a notepad, quickly scribbled two sentences, and went back to sleep. These days, we write much more in an hour while texting someone.

So to avoid repeating my failure, I set myself the specific goal of writing 500 words every day for 30 days.

In the beginning, your writing reflects your reading

I started on 16 April 2016, writing in my school notebooks, which still had lots of empty pages in them. That notebook was sent to the recycler's--the kabadiwala, as we call them here--ages ago, so I don't have any samples to share. I do remember writing about sunsets and building stories around images and experiences I'd daydreamed about. I wrote--or tried to write--sad stories, which usually involved someone dying or being orphaned, or "smiling despite the pain."

Why sad stories? While poking around on the internet, I'd discovered literary magazines such as Ploughshares, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Granta, and AGNI. These are prestigious magazines in the world of English literature and they publish literary fiction--which, unfortunately, I still cannot adequately describe. I read a lot of short stories published by these magazines, because I'd also learned that to write well you must read a lot.

I struggled to understand the stories, however. My takeaway, at that age, was they they were set in the real world--unlike most fantasy and science fiction--and that the protagonists, i.e., the main characters were often sad or struggling because they'd had a breakup or they'd lost someone or they'd experienced failure.

I brought this amateur, misguided understanding of the genre with me to the page, and aimed to write the kind of stories that book reviewers praised. My stories, I fantasized, would be described as "bittersweet" and "heartbreaking," tales that would make readers cry their eyes out. I even knew what my first book, a collection of sad short stories, would be called: "Sweet Tales of Sorrow."¹

I don't recall the exact words I'd written back then, but I remember using a lot of clichés. My characters were young women in their early 20s--older than me, living the youth I hadn't yet experienced--who were heartbroken, had been misunderstood, hadn't gotten the love they deserved, and so on. Someday, they would find a person who would "love them despite their flaws," "kiss their scars," and "truly understand them."

When I put these phrases in quotes, I don't mean to mock them, but rather emphasise how much my writing imitated the kind of stories I read--i.e., literary fiction published in prestigious journals. And I read those journals because editors and readers praised them. To me, these well-regarded magazines were to literature what Oscar-nominated movies were to Hollywood (and even Bollywood).

I told the stories I saw around me. This is natural--reading exposes you to stories and gives you a sense of what's possible. The more you read, the more kinds of stories you discover.

For example, until I'd read Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, I hadn't known that you could write a story narrated from the point of view of Death. Reading Ruskin Bond's essays showed me that non-fiction wasn't just limited to books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which I'd grown up seeing around the house. You could write about a walk in the forest or about a very rainy day, and that could go into a book too.

In fact, if I go even further back in time, my first attempts at writing stories and poems were imitations of what I'd read until then. At age 9, I wrote a dozen poems because I'd read in the weekly kids' magazine that a teen girl from our city had "come out with a book of poems" and I thought that I could do the same, since I was only a few years younger than her. These were all rhyming poems, just like the poems we studied in school, both in Hindi and English.

A couple of years later, I wrote a play titled, "Barbie and the Seven Princesses and Their Cruel Aunt," which was essentially the same story as Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, except with five fewer princess and much less dancing. Much later, I realised that what I'd done would be counted as plagiarism, or at least work that was "very heavily influenced" by the movie (which itself is an adaptation of a fairy tale).

In Class 7, I'd started writing a novel, again because I'd read, this time in the school newspaper, about a girl a year older than me, who'd published a book. I'd been obsessed with R. L. Stine's Goosebumps books at the time, and so I decided I'd write a horror book too. It was called The Threatening Gift and narrated by a pre-teen, just like the protagonists in Goosebumps. The story starts on her birthday. Everything is exciting until--gasp--she finds the titular threatening gift.

I worked on this novel--aiming for 120 pages, which was the average length of the Goosebumps books--for several months. When I wasn't writing, I spent my time reading online articles about the art and craft of writing--how to "flesh out" your characters (i.e, make the reader feel like they're real people), how to plot your novel (i.e., outline what happens in every chapter), how to title your book, and so on. The more I read, the more I realised that writing a book is a really difficult thing (which it indeed is), and so I stopped working on mine because I'd decided I need to learn more before I was ready to write (this wasn't a good strategy, as we'll discuss in a future essay).

And then at 16, I wrote what I thought was literary fiction because that's what I being praised online.

So in the beginning, when you start writing, it's very likely that you'll write the kind of stories that you're used to seeing around you, albeit a bit modified, because we all bring our own experiences and imaginations to the table.

And at this stage, imitating others is not a problem; it's a part of the process. As Neil Gaiman once said on Tumblr:

Young writers borrow things, like plots and characters, and try them on, like kids trying on adult clothes to see how they look in them.

So if you have no experience with writing outside school or work, I'd suggest starting with something small and easy. A 30-day challenge is a good place to begin. It's enough time to get past the first few (inevitable) blocks and start coming up with some stuff of your own, regardless of form or genre. If 500 words seems unmanageable for your schedule, try to aim for 250 words. Or maybe one page of your notebook. Whatever you choose, keep it specific, and stick to it.

What should you write about?

As for topic, there is no limit to what you may choose to write about. You can pick one of the millions of writing prompts available online. You may write about your day, someone you met recently, or a beautiful thing you saw that really stuck with you. You can try writing reviews of books you've read (or movies watched, games played, cafes visited, etc.). Or you may simply write about what's going on in your mind.

You can write why you're learning to write and who inspires you. You can write about what you're hoping to produce (a book, a screenplay, a daily blog, a memoir). Some people are always weaving stories in their heads, so if you're one of them, you might write about the exciting locations you daydream about, or adventures you wish you could have, or creatures you wish you could meet, or speeches you wish you could give.

Again, there are no limits.

There will be days when you wouldn't need a prompt or a topic, because something will compel you write down your thoughts: maybe someone will upset you and you'd feel the urge to complain about how people hurt each other. Or someone will do something nice for you and you'll want to note it down. Maybe you'll be struck with a genius idea that will send you rushing to the nearest notebook.

If you feel compelled, then let that urge guide you. If you feel it at a time and place where writing would be impossible, such as while waiting in a line or standing in a crowded metro, try to make a quick note on your phone or pocket notebook if you can. If not, don't worry--ideas are abundant and infinite. They're the opposite of precious, and you'll learn as you write, that writing produces more ideas (more on this in another essay).

The inevitable blocks

There will also be days when you wouldn't want to write at all. You'll wonder why you took up the challenge in the first place. You will feel inadequate and think that you're not made to be a writer. You will find every idea boring or uninspiring, and no amount of prompt-hunting will help. There will also be days when you'll feel motivated to write but the words won't come. All of this, too, is a natural part of the process, and happens even when you've been at it for years. On those days, you can write about your inability to write.

Or you can give yourself a break. Younger me would have balked at the idea of breaking a streak, but older me knows that rest is not optional. If the writing--or life--gets really difficult, you are allowed to take a break. You don't need anyone's permission.

If it's possible, however, try not to stay away for more than a day. Write again the next morning or evening.

But if things get really difficult, know that you would not be less of writer if you didn't write every day. Know that writing is a skill that can be learned at any age, and that even if you return after years away at work, being sick, grieving, or busy doing other, exciting things, the empty page will always be ready for what you have to say. You just have to pick up the pen and start writing.

1. As you can see, I was obsessed with the word "bittersweet" and often thought of idioms like "distance makes the heart grow fonder." Perhaps there is some truth to the teenage tendency to be melodramatic.↩