To me, the greatest adventure is a blank sheet of notebook paper sitting in front of you, and a good old number two wooden pencil. Nothing makes me feel so unlimited as a piece of paper that I may write whatever I please on. What words will find themselves onto the page? What story will unfold? Will I use old or new characters? The boundaries are limitless, which must also be why a blank sheet of notebook paper causes me to start sweating and feel helpless.

To me, the tools needed to write a good story are these: A way to write, a blank page, and an imagination. It doesn’t even have to be a large imagination. The most you could think of could be a red car. Maybe that’s the extent of your imagination. Now, you’ll need some questions. Whose car is it? Where do they drive it? It is clean, or dented and dirty? You can write a whole story based on a red car, and you could make it pretty interesting. For instance, it could be alive, like Herbie. I mean, how do you think they thought that story up?

On the other hand, your imagination could be a bit wild. Maybe your imagination could cook up a story like there was an alien girl who lived on Mars and then NASA came to explore and she was frightened of them but then they found her and took her to Earth to study her and she learned about our planet and then she fell in love with a NASA dude and they ended up moving back to Mars and developing a research center there and they had twenty-one kids and they were half human half Martian and they all lived happily ever after. That’s a lot different than a red car. It’s still a story, though, isn’t it? Both could be interesting… Or not. It all depends on the author.

The point is, you don’t have to have a huge imagination to write a story. If all you can think of is a red car, then fine! You can write about one. Make it exciting. Like the Thomas the Train Engine of cars. Casey the Corvette or something. Patty the Porsche.

You can write about anything in the entire world, and make it interesting. From breakfast to astronauts, tires to vampires. There is something, though, for me, that is so intimidating, so scary, I go a little crazy. It’s a blank paper.

Ah. You should what I’ve saved on my computer. It’s incredible. Half the things, I have no idea where I wanted them to go, or why I started them in the first place. I’ve got around thirty-eight saved stories that I have found as of now. In my life? I’ve probably started over seventy. And the funny thing is, five of them, at the most, are finished. That leaves, like, at lease eighty percent unfinished. This is what a blank sheet of paper can do to you. I’ll be writing a story, eleven chapters long with a good plot, and then accidentally open up a new word document. I’ll go to close it, and realize that hey… I’ve got a good idea for a story! And then, I move onto a new idea. The old one is forgotten.

This shouldn’t dissuade you from writing a story! Oh, no! Where would we be if no one wrote any stories! I’m a bookworm, and proud of it, and I can’t imagine life without books. So please, please, use whatever imagination you have in your noodle, and open up a word document. And just write. Trust me.

Just write.