How to Start Writing

Spice up how you show up with a 6–5–4–3–2–1 menu of tips

Hello fellow learn-it-all 👋 Greetings from my childhood bedroom in Michigan (the Great Lake State that looks like a mitten) ✋

I started a writing coaching business this past fall to help creatives get unblocked and start writing. This decision has made me more intentional about studying writing. If you’d like to connect more about your writing, book a time to connect here.

Anyways, I don’t like the pressure of taking something “seriously” because that word has a connotation that sucks out the fun. In 2019, Tiago Forté’s course fundamentally shifted how I view note-taking systems, and he says, “You can’t compete with someone who is having fun.” SO I am making this fun by turning it into a menu of ingredients.

If you’re starting anew with writing, below are six tips from me, five from Stephen King, four from Henrik Karlsson, three inspired by David Perell’s guests, two from Neil Gaiman, and an invitation on where to start. Enjoy letter 292 :)

~~~

🖊️Six writing tips from my experiences

Tip 1: Start by making writing useful to you

Ingredient: Daily words

✍️Learned from writing every day since April 2019

In other words, please yourself before pleasing others. Run experiments with when, how and where a daily writing practice feels best for you. Will you write at sunrise? Right before lights out? Before you eat lunch? In a physical notebook? In a digital note? For a duration of time? For a number of words?

I can honestly say I don’t sleep well when I haven’t been able to put words on the page. My past Zen teacher, who witnessed my tears when I broke my own protocol for that of the Zen protocol, might argue I am attached to giving too much attention to my monkey mind but I see it as the time when I get to reflect and pour thoughts to fill my cup. It gives me peace of mind when I go to sleep and when I wake up.

Back in 2019, I saw my grandma forget who I was, and then slowly forget who she was. This fear sparked enough inspiration to start writing down gratitudes and learnings from each day. I have been showing up every day since. So the primary motivator for me is to capture life before it gets forgotten. Similar to the memoirist of Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey shared, “I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget.”

And learning, gratitude, and honesty are core values of mine. In my journal, I get to reflect on what went well, count my blessings, and do so without sugarcoating, so my truthful writing practice allows me to live by my values.

Tip 2: Make your publishing ritual something energizing that you look forward to

Ingredient: Publish what is good enough

✍️ Learned from sharing a letter on Substack for the past 292 weeks

You get to make it your own. I play my piano Writing Flow playlist each week. After I ship this I am going to go walk two adorable golden doodle outside in the snow. I see it as an opportunity to memorialize what I would want future me to remember.

Life is my classroom. No one is going to hold my hand and help me make sense of my life in story format or find clarity on what truly matters. Each week when I show up to the template on my Notion dashboard with the blinking cursor, it’s a choice for what type of world I want to make more of. It is a blessing that we as humans can be aware of what we consume and create and connect. Creativity is merely ideas intersecting.

Each time after I publish something, even all well knowing it is far from perfect, especially if I find typos and edit after I publish it, I feel a sense of relief. I know that I showed up. I expressed rather than suppressed.

My letters are like my weekly form of show-and-tell.

I don’t live some dreamy life that makes mine any more important than yours. I invite you to see written expression online as an opportunity to feel good about creating clarity on something you care about and to open yourself up to connection.

Tip 3: Share intentions with others aloud to create clarity and momentum

Ingredient: Accountability

⭕ Learned from 11 weekly writing circles I facilitated in Fall 2025

Each Wednesday morning, I was reminded of how infectious it is to be inside a container of people who care.

Devotion grows when it’s shared. Presence appears more easily when others are also reaching for it. And writing, even the messy, uncertain kind, feels less lonely when we’re all doing it together. It was a simple format that I’d facilitate over 90 minutes. We’d check in at the beginning with a writing intentions, get grounded, stretch, write solo and then come back to celebrate how it went.

When you share actions you say you will do and then do them, it builds integrity with yourself.

Here’s to more circles, more pages, and more courage in 2026. To Melissa Menke, Jolleen Opula, Mary Harrison, Pablo Musumeci, Bianca Winter, and Victoria Mitchell Avidiu who joined me in the circles, thank you dearly. You made this season of writing feel less like a solo slog and more like a shared pilgrimage. Here’s a thread of recaps from each circle.

Tip 4: Read it aloud

Ingredient: Listening

🎒Learned from an eight-week fiction and poetry course

I took my first “legitimate” fiction and poetry in-person writing class taught by Kate Darnton through the International Writers Collective. Each Tuesday night, we sat in a circle at a cozy bookstore after hours. This routine grounded me. Everyone was devoted to showing up and trying their best. The possibilities of the written word were inspired by a range of exercises from sci-fi to romance scandals.

Each week, it was daunting to wear the cone of silence while my writing was read aloud by a peer. But it was incredibly valuable.

Then I’d be gifted critiques on my strengths and where to improve, based on my preamble. The in-person circle and genuine critiquing were like nothing I’ve experienced before. What a special space.

What’s come out of this course? I signed up, curious about whether I’d enjoy this shift way from first person memoiresque style. What I found is I still struggle with the concept of fiction. I do want to use my imagination, but so much of the world is curated, and the modern age with technology is taking away the delight of the mess of humanity. I also learned from this course the importance of including a preamble with a clear goal for what I am writing, grounding a scene, and the type of narration. I am still curious to try again and explore further.

Tip 5: Go talk about your writing to find the others

Ingredient: Community

🤝Learned from attending monthly Substack Writer Meetups in Amsterdam

It’s a beautiful thing to be in a circle of writers who are interested in becoming better at writing. When one writes, they become clearer at how they communicate rather than what they share.

My friends Ana V. Martins and Sarah Bringhurst Familia facilitate a writers’ meetup to bring together online writers in the Amsterdam. It’s been such a delight to sit and chat more about what we write about. Even the mere exercise of introducing myself and articulating what these letters are about is value enough. And to live in the same place as someone already filters a lot about a person– that they are creative, expressive, and curious.

Tip 6: Make writing playful & fresh

Ingredient: Spontaneity

🤝Learned from attending biweekly writer meetups in Haarlem, Netherlands

I went to a SoFar Sounds concert for an Artist Date alone. I leaked so much saltwater when Abby sang about being away from Singapore, where she’s from. I hugged her afterward. She invited me to the cafe where she works days later and gave me the Dutch address, which I then memorized, even though I couldn’t pronounce it. After I had some serendipitous conversations at the cafe, I found a short story there from my now friend Luke Ambrose. I reached out. He invited me to his writing meetup. It was a welcomed break from the fat happy white cat Witje I was sitting in Haarlem.

As each writer arrives, we write out prompts on little slips of paper, which are then randomly pulled, with 10 minutes or so to write. Then those who feel brave share their vomit drafts aloud. I did this to people I barely knew every time, and it was surprisingly empowering. As breaks, we’d sip tea, eat cookies, and exchange stories that tend to compare different stories of where we are from.

It was a delight to use the group's collective intelligence, prompting one another.

~~

In summary, my six writing tips

1. Start by making writing useful to you

2. Make your publishing ritual something energizing that you look forward to

3. Share intentions with others aloud to create clarity and momentum

4. Read it aloud

5. Go talk about your writing to find the others

6. Make writing playful and fresh

Six ingredients to be set up for success:

1. Daily words

2. Publish what is good enough

3. Accountability

4. Listening

5. Community

6. Spontaneity

📚5-4-3-2-1 Writing ideas that lit me up from others

💻 Five tips from an article I read

Advice to a friend starting a blog by Henrik Karlsson

1. A simple format to start writing with: “Here is a problem I had and here’s how I solved it.”

2. “Not that many people will care about what you write, at least for the first few years, so make the writing useful to you. Write in a way that lets you refine your thoughts about the things that matter.”

3. Use text message as rough drafts: “One reason chat messages are unusually lively is that the format encourages you to write from emotion.”

4. Use the same prompt and rewrite a draft before editing: “Look at Kafka’s diary. Look at what he did when he felt one of his drafts sucked. He didn’t rewrite the sentences, moving commas and phrases around. He flipped a page and wrote a new draft from scratch.”

5. When editing ask: “what is the weakest 20 percent of this draft?”

📖 Four tips from a book I read (most of)

On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft by Stephen King

1. Close the door to protect the muse

2. Write 1,000 words a day (or something that keeps you honest).

3. You don’t need an outline. You need a situation and then intuition and honesty to craft the story as it unfolds.

4. Write for one person.

🎧Three prompts inspired by a podcast I listened to

from David Perell ’s podcast: 10 Writing Lessons That Changed My Life

1. Ask: Who do I want to deep dive and actually learn from?
   The poet & critic Dana Goia explains that people don’t want to be tainted by influences to be original but originality is actually born out of understanding those who become before them.

2. Ask: How can you keep your freshness in your ability to see the world?
   The philosopher and essayist Alain De Botton believes that media packages up ideas to tell us what we should be thinking about too much.

3. Ask: How can I communicate in an uninhibited way?
   The communication strategist Lulu Cheng Meservey encourages writers to allow writing to be a bit messy so it feels more alive.

🎬Two tips from a video I watched

from Neil Gaiman’s 2012 Commencement Speech “Make Good Art”

1. Start writing and see it as an adventure:
   “I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure and to stop when it felt like work which meant that life did not feel like work.”

2. Embrace what only you can make:
   “Make your art. Do the stuff only you can do. The urge starting out is to copy and that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find their own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people but the one that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice. Your mind. Your story. Your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.” - Neil Gaiman

❓Question to think about

What’s the first sentence you want to put on the page today?

🌟Quote to inspire

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” —Theodore Roosevelt

🔍Word to define

Preamble (n)

a preliminary or preparatory statement; a short intention-setting note for what a piece wants to be

In Law, it’s the introductory part of a statute or deed, stating its purpose, aims, and justification.

Example: I am going to experiment with a preamble up in the header of my document so when I feel blocked I can feel less lost while looking back at what I was originally intending to write.

📸Photos of the Week

I relearned that wool boots are not slushproof, nor are they equipped for the snow. As I pressed the ball of my toe against the Jeep clutch, I felt a squish of water inside my sock. First time driving a car in over a year. And in snow too. Thoughts and prayers are welcome.

Quickly found a different pair of rubber soled ones in the basement. It’s so bad that there was a snow day this week for metro Detroit schools. What a Michigan Moment. Glad I haven’t slipped on ice yet during my sunset steps at 4pm.

Ah, the joys of Michigan.

🙏Shoutouts

• To Tamara Hasekamp for recommending the course taught by Kate and loaning me her Stephen King book. What delightful timing :-)

• To Richard Reis for recommending Neil Gaiman’s talk when I was in a writing slump

~~~

I am grateful you chose to fill part of your day here.

If something here resonated, reply with one line: Which idea do you want to try?

I’d love your you press the ❤️ , leave a comment, email me at vermetJL@gmail.com. I love hearing from you. 😊

Keep on learning 🌺

Too da looo

Jen

P.S. #1 - I coach writers. I guide them to find their voice, build a writing rhythm, and have fun hitting “publish.” Let’s have a 15-minute intro chat.

P.S. #2 - In case you missed last week, I wrote a roundup of my month and what kept me showing up because it was the month I almost skipped.

P.S. #3 - Here are more notes in a table from the “How I Write” podcast mentioned above from each of the ten writers highlighted: