I am making a modest attempt to give away more books. It’s slow, as I usually want to read them first, or to reread them. This week it is Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper, by Sark, which I am sending to my friend Michelle. Juicy Pens is printed just as the author wrote it — in blazing, full color. Her journey is all about growing to appreciate herself in all her originality, and how she found readers (first) and then a publisher. How she gave it all up for art and writing, living as a young adult in a magic cottage that she rented for $500 when she didn’t have that much money. (Secret=hand-drawn posters.)

Not all of us are brave enough to live a life devoted to art. Let alone capital-A Art. Some of us have families, or jobs we love. Some of us would spend so much time worrying about money, if we hadn’t a day-job, that the sacrifice would scarcely be worth it. But, if writing is important to you, then Sark would still encourage you to find places in the interstices of your life in which to write. Fifteen minutes. Forty-five minutes. “Writing only leads to more writing.” You don’t need to live in a magic cottage in order to experience magic. As her chapter one title suggests: “Wings on Your Pens and Fingers.”

My introduction to Sark’s work came (many years ago) from my students. I am happy to pass on that recommendation to you.

Begin Again is the title of Grace Paley’s collected poems, and excellent advice — generally — for pursuing any creative career. (Click here to hear Garrison Keillor read her poem, “In the Bus,” which includes the famous line.)

I have a number of friends who tell me they would like to write a book, who have been telling me for years that they would like to write a book. What stops them — and this is of course merely my observation — is one of two things. Either they simply don’t make writing a priority, as though it is so easy to write a book that it will just happen at some time (like falling off a log, as my people say). Or they feel that writing a book is so freaking difficult that they can never, never do it. Writing books is for other people, like sailing around the world is for other people.

Books get written one page, one paragraph, one sentence at a time. A poem is written one word, one image, one line at a time.

Like the old joke about how to eat an elephant (one bite at a time), there’s really no other way to tackle it. Whether you think it would be a cinch, or if you think it’s so huge you can never possibly get it done, there is no other way.

My best, and first advice to my friends is to begin. Think of your “book” — in the abstract, best sense — as a big, blank canvas. This morning, put a mark on it. Tomorrow morning, get up and put another mark on it. You need a shitty first draft (the SFD, as my writing students used to call it) before you can revise. Will you keep any of these early marks? Maybe, maybe not. What you are really learning at this stage of the game, is how to begin. And how to begin again.

There’s a grace in that.