How do you start to write?

For the last few weeks I've been planning some videos. Sounds as if I'm planning War and Peace or something!

That's not it. What I'm hoping to do is allow three people I know through my business or other writing activities talk about writing. Plus a couple of videos with me talking.

The important thing I want to get across is how possible it is for someone to do it. Someone who may be hesitating on the brink with an idea or even half an idea for a story, a business how to or a grand sweeping novel about of a family.

Why am I doing it when there is so much other stuff out there on writing? Why go to the bother of it?

Well it's not because I want to see myself on screen especially. And it's certainly not because I think I have the only way to to succeed in writing.

It's because... someone encouraged me. More than one person. Every day I found something to inspire me when I was thinking, 'can I do this?'

So I know that the influences come from many places and people. A quote here, a chapter of a book, or a video.

And what I know, having gone through it, is how fragile that first impulse can be without support. Like the tender shoots of spinach pushing through in my conservatory.

What we don't need at this point is someone to tell us how hard it is to get published, how difficult a writer's life can be, how many other people have done it all.

Heavens, don't we know that already? Isn't that what's stopped us doing it before? It took me till my forties to shrug off my English teacher's criticism that I wasn't good enough at English to take an A level.

So wet blankets are out. Soft warm fleeces are in.

It might be that somewhere out there, someone hears my contribution and it makes a difference to them. To the way they think about writing.

And most important - starts them writing. That's why I'm bothering.