First Words

The first words in a story seem to be the hardest for me. I can have every detail set out clearly in mind, know the conclusion with absolute certainty, but the start simply eludes me. The saying goes that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but who knew that step would be so hard?

So, I find myself at a new beginning. I'm starting this blog, with the primary purpose of chronicling my endeavors to publish a book, to share my thoughts and hopefully, somewhere along the way, to entertain. 

The story so far: at last years NaNoWriMo, I managed to finish 50,000 words of an extremely rough draft of my story. The joy of NaNoWriMo is that you don't have time to worry about editing, of getting a perfect novel out straight away. It's all about getting pen to paper, words on the screen, and not stopping until you get to type 'The End'. It was a great experience, one that I recommend to anyone with the slightest interest in writing.

However, that's pretty much where it has remained for the past nine months, an unfinished draft collecting digital dust on my hard drive. Finally, a couple of nights back, my friend persuaded me it was time to stop messing about and actually get on with it. 

I've decided the priority is to get the structure of the story set; to make sure the journey is complete. Some scenes will need to be added, some taken away. To help out with this, I've started using yWriter5, a brilliant piece of free software. With this, I'm outlining the main points of each chapter, to see where the main plot holes are that need filling. 

I've no doubt that the thousand miles journey will be tricky, and there'll be plenty of times I'll wonder why on earth I'm doing any of this. In the meantime though, I'll start the journey with a single step, a single sentence. 

Once upon a time...