The first tussle most of us have with writing is to write at all. We long to get going but jobs, family, health and life muscle in, sometimes for years. Even if they don’t, how do we justify writing time when it may or may not produce a financial payoff? Yet the less we get around to it, the more the need to write presses on our hearts and the worse we feel. When writing feels impossible before we’ve even started, what do we do?

More often than not, all you need is permission to write. So here and now, I give you permission to write. If you’re a writer, the more you write, the happier you will be. Feel free to spend time writing, and to be among other writers and feel comfortable there. Lower your expectations and cover page after page to your heart’s content about yourself, your life, the book you want to write, why you want to write it, about anything at all. Train yourself to welcome your words and follow them wherever they take you.

If your writing group enjoys deep, searching criticism of each other’s first drafts, don’t be surprised if you find your writing flow slowing, even drying up. This is normal. The answer is a kindly writing-buddy, happy to write alongside you, without crit or much of it. Your inner writer (and theirs) can be fragile at the start. All that detailed criticism can wait.

A journal is a great friend, even if you only have ten minutes now and again. Compressed time can be amazingly productive. Trust yourself to relax into your unique written style or voice. This stage of loose, all-encompassing writing is about building your confidence so that when that other obstacle shows up, the one that glares at you, snarling: ‘What makes you think you can do it? Who cares what you have to say?’, you are so deep in the joy of it, you take no notice. And you keep writing.

Let yourself marvel at what lands on your pages beyond what you planned. Congratulate yourself each time. This is your treat and yes, you are allowed to revel in it. Soon you’ll be blossoming in your writing world, so wrapped up in ideas and adventures that you don’t even notice when the snarl-monster slinks away…

There will be more in my new book, scheduled by Colorful Crow Publishing for publication next year. It’s what I’ve learned over thirty years – usually the hard way − about developing a robust writing process for life.