How do you start your story?

Today I just drove around and got lost on the highway. A flash woke me up “Shit” I thought. I drove more than 20 km too fast. This fine will be huge and I am already broke as hell. The whole day I had been thinking about writing but somehow I could not sit down.

There seemed to be too much to do around the house and even after an hour I still cleaned up. I went for a walk. Half an hour into my walk I started to observe some people and words started forming in my head. This looks like a start for a new story. I slid into it easily. Actually, I had nothing else to do and I moved. My brain worked after the walk.

I learnt about writing is that you need to start at some point. You might be the type like me who needs inspiration from the outside world. I cannot always come up with a story from my imagination but once I have the start I can sit down and write almost without a plan. With “Double Happiness” I started like my driving today. I had no aim and I am free to fail. I did not write this story to become a novel.

At one point in time I woke up out of my trance. My writing voice had taken over. I gave birth to Vivienne M Sharma in the dungeons of a wildlife park, a tiger resort. Again, I had nothing else to do that day so I wrote and wrote. At one point either Lara or Anna asked me “What are you doing?” “I am writing a story.”

If you feel the same way about writing but you do not know where to start pick any ordinary scene. You can get an idea how I started when you look into “A winter journey…”. Never mind the English. (I used Google Translate for this one and it is hard to translate from my mother tongue). Describe what is happening around you. Start to build a story around the people you see. Use all your stereotypes about a person and let them come to life. You can. You are a writer and they will not sue you unless you know their real names (and use them).

Hugs

Vivienne M Sharma