Here’s one thing you have to try, if you never have done it: take fiction writing out for a date sometime and see what happens. Even if you’re not a fiction writer. Even if you think you’re not a writer at all.

You can just sit down and start writing. No editing or plotting or fussing at first; just tell a story. Even if you pretend it’s for your kids, or someone’s kids, and start it with “Once upon a time…” you’re likely to find yourself lost pretty quickly in the world you’re creating in your mind and on the page–even if that’s just for a little while.

I’d call that Lesson 1: The joy of storytelling.

You can build into your tale the things that you like best in a story: courage, a quest, smart-aleck dialogue, lost or found treasure, promises kept or broken, love, war, magic.

There can be many steps between that and a final story or novel, but they don’t have to take long either. As with anything else, you can labor long over your story or just blurt it out, like Jack Kerouac is said to have done in writing On the Road. Sometimes blurting it out is best.

But here’s the thing: doing this, just Lesson 1, will change you forever. You’ll never look at your life the same way again. You’ll never read another book with the same view again. That’s a wild claim for me to make but I know it’s true.

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.