I know a lot of people who have always wanted to write a book. A book about their lives, about their jobs, their insights–whatever it is, the biggest thing holding people back is that daunting question: Where do I start?

Last month I wrote an entire rough draft of a fiction novel, and met a major milestone in my life. The story is hell at this point, a rough collection of tangents that’s embarrassing to talk about, but it’s a start. Having a mediocre first draft in your hands is a lot better than one in your head. At least you have somewhere to start all over from again, and the knowledge that you can see it through again.

A month is plenty of time to write your first novel. Hundreds of people have done so during National Novel Writing Month, including kids in high school. The main problem is getting started, and sticking with it.

Start tomorrow. Right after you wake up, make coffee or stretch, and then sit down and write until you’ve written 10 pages. Don’t stop, don’t get interrupted, just write. Wake up the next day and continue. Repeat for a month, and you’ll have written 300 pages. Don’t worry about what comes, if it’s dull or if it’s complete crap. Usually, the first couple pages you’ll write every morning will be nothing but crap. Complete shit. But that’s to be expected.

See, writing a novel is like running a marathon. Starting out as a couch potato, it seems impossible to enjoy running so much that you’d want to do it for 26 miles. But it’s attainable for everyone with a few month’s worth of persistence. Ninety percent of the difficulty isn’t real. It’s the mental barriers holding you back from starting.

So start tomorrow. Sit down and write for as long as you can. Push yourself past what keeps you comfortable. Then get up the next day and keep pushing. Write 10 pages every day for a month, and you’ll have 300 pages to work with. 300 pages that have always been inside of you waiting to come out. Isn’t that worth the initial discomfort of being alone with a blank page?

Make it happen. Set your alarm clock, get up earlier, and make the time to write. The world wants to hear your story, and the world needs your honesty. The world does not live for the daily grind, the world lives for the beauty of the human saga, and you’ve got a story. Share it.

If you’re ready to get started, check out How to Be a Great Writer. There’s plenty more tips to help you get started and keep your focus while writing.

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Richard Dawkins wants to sell you a religion.

He won’t call it that; instead say he’s only promoting rationality and science over dreams and fairy tales.

But what Dawkins doesn’t realize is the concept of pure rationality and truth he’s selling is little more than a fairy tale itself.

The scientific method has been around for centuries, slowly chipping away at man’s ignorance, until he’s come to the sophisticated worldview he has today. Now, we have the gifts of modern medicine and instant communication thanks to science. Professor Dawkins believes it’s time for science to determine our belief systems about the world.

Unfortunately, Dawkins ignores the problems that leave science not much better at explaining the universe than even the worst fairy tale. Most importantly, that science’s very idea of the universe up until a few decades ago had been completely and utterly wrong.

Einstein blew away all scientific ideas about the structure of the universe. He made a huge breakthrough with his theory of relativity. Our understanding of the universe grew immensely with this understanding, but this immense growth in understanding only gave us more questions.

Science has yet to establish any absolute truths about the universe. Instead, it has possibly approached what it guesses may be close to an absolute truth.

In other words, to believe that science will redeem us all and give us ultimate meaning to life is no more rational than saying a Chihuahua will give redeem us and give us ultimate meaning. They’re both postulates, and they’re both impossible to prove.

One of the greatest human desires is to understand the world and how it really works. But a huge problem with science is that the more it understands, the less we personally understand about the way the world works. Because the world grows exponentially in complexity as we grow linearly in what we know personally. (If that!)

So the huge growth in knowledge about how we think the world may work really only leads to more misunderstanding about the way the world actually works. As everybody specializes further and further, we lose the ability to understand completely even one discipline of science, let alone two. Let alone what all of our facts are getting at.

So science has created order and chaos, in surprisingly equal amounts. There are millions of scientists solving millions of questions, but nobody will ever be able to take them all in and guess at what they mean or where they are going. Maybe the pursuit of knowledge leads to real knowledge and real misunderstanding in equal amounts. It’s quite possible.

But what’s impossible is to pretend a mountain of facts will lead to deeper understanding. Just because humanity has done a million experiments does not mean it will derive a great truth from underneath all of it it. But that’s what science does, is build mountains of facts. It’s up to the gatekeepers of knowledge (the Professors and scientists) to let us know what all those important facts really mean.

And from that perspective, professors have become no more than priests, interpreting extremely obscure facts into meaning that us lesser people (non-experts) can understand. Nobody really understands what’s going on, but the experts pretend they have an idea. Science really wants to be the final, great religion.

That wouldn’t be a problem either, if it weren’t for Richard Dawkins views on other religions. According to him, believing in God is “intellectual and moral cowardice”. The last thing we need now is more religious intolerance and more blind followers. Please think before you hate. Your rough religion needs tolerance, at the very least. It doesn’t have much else going for it yet.

Underneath all of this though, is a much deeper desire for humans, to have an up and to have a down. Scientists believe that science provides an up and a down, that the quest for Truth and Understanding is why humans are here. To be alive and to provide a huge insight before you die, that is something real. Life is just a chance to further humanity’s progress into a better world.

That’s just a dream, not real, but if you believe in it you will never be convinced it’s just a dream. Because Truth is Relative. We all have our own individual truths.

Mr. Dawkins, it’s time to stop pretending someone’s beliefs are right and another is wrong. We are all human, and we all lie to ourselves to an extent. Don’t put down another’s beliefs for its shortcomings while ignoring your own. The world is a whole lot more complex than you or I understand, and spreading hate and intolerance helps nobody. Hate may sell books Mr. Dawkins, but it has the opposite effect you expected. It makes you no different from the other religious fundamentalists creating discord. Now go do some experiments to prove you aren’t one of them.

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