Most people, when they decide to write something meaningful, try to start at the beginning. Their birth. Their earliest memory. Childhood. They feel as though the story has to unfold chronologically, or it won't make sense.
This is what causes most people to stop before they've really started.
The beginning is often the hardest place to begin. It's abstract. It's distant. It's hard to find the feeling in it. And when you can't find the feeling, the words won't come, and the blank page wins.
Start with what's loudest
Right now, as you're reading this, something is already in your head. A memory. A regret. Something you've been meaning to say. Something someone did for you once that you've never properly acknowledged. Something you're afraid will be forgotten.
That's where you start. Not at the beginning. At the thing that's already asking to be said.
The order doesn't matter. Chronology is for biographies. What you're making is something more personal than that — a collection of moments and thoughts and pieces of yourself that will, together, become a picture of who you were.
Some places to start that aren't the beginning
- —The last time you were really happy. What were you doing? Who was there?
- —Something a parent or grandparent told you that you've never forgotten.
- —The moment you understood something important about yourself.
- —A decision you made that changed everything — and whether you'd make it again.
- —What your hands look like right now and what they've done.
- —Something funny that happened that you're afraid will die with you.
- —The thing you most want them to know — the single most important thing.
Permission to be imperfect
The letters you save do not have to be good. They don't have to be literary. They don't have to be the perfect articulation of your inner life.
They have to be real. They have to be yours. And they have to exist — which means you have to write them, even badly, even incompletely, even starting in the middle of a sentence.
One imperfect letter saved is worth a thousand perfect ones never written.
The first one is the hardest
Every person who has filled a story on Dear Grandchild will tell you the same thing: the first piece was the hardest. After that, something unlocked. The words got easier. The memories started coming on their own.
You don't have to know what you're doing. You just have to start. Anywhere. Today.