I wish more writers would start in the middle of their books, blogs or chapters. That would spare them the angst of feeling that they have to write the perfect lead before they can move on.
Whenever I think of writers who crumple up or delete their first pages (or first paragraph) again and again, I think of Snoopy perched on his dog house with his typewriter and Billy Crystal trying to nail the opening to his novel in the 1987 black comedy Throw Momma from the Train. Neither ever gets past the first page.
The irony is that as often as not, that perfect lead that almost derailed your whole project doesn’t stand up to scrutiny once you’ve delved in. And why would it after all that added thought and knowledge about your topic or characters?
That’s why I usually pound out a placeholder that reminds me of my general theme or that just gets me launched.
I do much the same when I come up with a working title. I know I don’t need to get it right. I just need to get close enough to stay the course when I start to get confused, an almost inevitable part of the writing process when working on a big project.
Eventually the perfect lead or title will hit. That will more than likely happen at the most inopportune moment, but I’ll stop whatever I’d doing and write it down. That’s not the kind of gift I want to lose.
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