“Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear.

Start with pain. Start with doubt… just start.”

– Ijeoma Umebinyuo –

You don’t need to be a talented writer to come up with the phrase just start. It’s made up of two simple words that hardly require hours of thought, writing and re-writing. What is hard about this easiest of phrases is the action that it implies.

To “just start” is the scariest, thrilling, strangest, and most rewarding thing that you can do.

For me, just start means this blog. Having a social media platform has become synonymous with being a writer, and it wasn’t something I considered when I first started writing my Young Adult series. Starting that was easy. Realizing I would need to promote it with social media was not. I eased into it with an Instagram account that I’ve been posting to for well over a year now, and this blog is the next step. It’s my next start.

Just like writing my book led to the scariness of showing it to people, and then sending it out to agents and publishers. And my Instagram account was a gamble to launch (after all, who was I to think anyone would want to follow me?), I’m glad that I started both.

I’ve learned a lot about what I’m capable of writing, handling and picking myself up from. And with Instagram, I’ve read some great books that I would otherwise not have heard of, gotten support from other writers, and been inspired. It’s that encouragement that I want to carry through to this blog.

I’ll be posting about what has helped me become a better writer, what I’ve learned on the path to finding a publisher, and as many writing tips and tricks as I can. It’s going to be a journey, but one that I am more than ready to just start.

– K.M Allan