Where to start?

The simplest answer is anywhere you want.

Consider the kind of fiction you like.  Start with your favorite authors-- look at how they approach beginnings.  If you are on a tight budget, go to a library.  If that seems old-fashioned (sigh, anguish) then click over to your favorite Amazon free-peek and browse the opening lines.  Take a look at the start of the novel or story. What opening lines/paragraphs draw you in?  What hooks you?  Most people are inspired to write because someone impressed them.  Most writers start out as readers.  Somebody cast a spell on you with their words.  Probably that is why you want to return the favor.

Here are a handful of my favorite starts:

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.  Not that all months aren't rare.   But there be bad and good, as the pirates say.  Take September, a bad month:  school begins.  Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine:  there's no chance in the world for school.  June,  no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors swing wide and September's a billion years away."

                                      --Something Wicked this Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

"It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning.

                                      -- "A Worn Path,"  Eudora Welty

"I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.  I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again.  The perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story.  I stared at it in the swinging lights of  the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside."

                                      --"Sonny's Blues,"  James Baldwin

"Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow."

                                       --Carrie, Stephen King

"My earliest memories involve fire."

                                     --A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane

"My father said he saw him years later playing in a tenth-rate commercial league in a textile town in Carolina, wearing shoes and an assumed name."

                                     --Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella

These are a few opening gambits that grab me--but the opening lines of stories and books that you love will probably teach you more than any list that I could provide.  I like Lawrence Block's mysteries.  He's another writer I've mentioned that has shared his wisdom.  I notice he almost always begins with some sort of action and a time stamp.  At the very least he likes to play with numbers in his openers:

"On the last Thursday in September, Lisa Holtzmann went shopping on Ninth Avenue."

                                       -- The Devil Knows Your Dead, Lawrence Block

I include that one because it is something of a professional practice in crime fiction.

Here's a classic from Kate Chopin:

"Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars."

                                       --"A Pair of Silk Stockings" Kate Chopin

It can be simple. "Call me Ishmael" is about as simple an opening as there is...and it is attached to a whale of a story. (Ow.)  The point?  Simple is good if you are stuck. And the truth is that you can always go back and change it.  Don't let the notion of a perfect start stop you from starting at all.

This list could go on, but again, check out the stories and novels that you like, that drew you in, that grabbed you and led you to actually read the tale.

Please allow me to digress:  In my blog about description I pointed out that a handy trick to build your skills is to try copy-writing the prose of an author you like.  If you have not tried this, and you feel stuck or lack confidence in your skills-- try it.

One of the most fun moments you will have is that EUREKA! moment when you realize that you would not have written that sentence in that way.  That you could, in fact, have written that one sentence better.  Every time I look at something I've written I find a reason to rewrite, something to improve.  Alas.

But when you see this in the work of a real honest-to-God professional-- wow.  You start to realize that yes, maybe you can.

And if you stick with it, you will.

So back to that sticky problem of where-to-begin.

The answer is:  right now.

10 Rules to Live By

About a million years ago, someone challenged me to create a list of "ten rules to live by."  It was one of those indirect challenges that show up on your favorite browser through various social media marketing strategies.

Usually such a challenge is the attempt of some wannabe self-help guru that can't think of any other way to get your attention that day.

While I admire the often good intentions that lead to such a list, I rarely see any point in giving it further consideration than the few seconds it takes for me to scan it on my feed.

But...

Sometimes life happens, and you give it more thought, and those thoughts snowball into a fit and spasm that forces you to write about it before you will be allowed to move on to something else.  So, with apologies for an introduction that is way too long-- here's my list: 

1. You have to love and respect yourself before you can love and respect anybody else.  Treating others as you yourself would like to be treated means you have to love yourself too.  Otherwise the whole thing doesn't work.  Those periods in my life when I lost my sense of self-respect are those periods in my life when I've felt the most miserable.  I am at my happiest when I believe that I am taking the right course of action.

2.  Someone once said that when you lose, don't lose the lesson.  That seems to promote learning the hard way.  But, the hard way is still a valid way to learn.  Whatever setbacks or obstacles or tragedies befall you, do not fail to see-- and learn from-- the lesson.  That which does not kill you can make you stronger, but only if you build on the rock of the lesson and not the quicksand of victimhood. So you learned the hard way-- learning is learning. When you have fallen on your face, own up to it and be thankful that you have the strength to get up again. Or make art.  Pain can translate into great art.

3.  Sometimes it is better to love and be silent.

4.  You can't control what others say and do.  You can control what you say and do, and lead by example.  

5.  Worry is a waste of time and energy.  Don't worry.  If you find that you are worried about something, take appropriate action.  Focus on what you can do, not that which is out of your control.

6.  Respect for your loved ones does not mean giving up on your values for their whims.

7.  Work hard; more important, work smart.

8.  Tolerance, art, and diversity are not luxuries; they are facts of a beautiful life.

9. When all else fails, help, teach, learn, and be kind.  That is not giving up or giving in, and even when you die trying, you die a hero.

10.  Love is the most important thing.  If everything else is based on love, then you've got a list worth having.

To paraphrase John Lennon, I hope I passed the audition.  The next blog will be about writing again. Honest.

On second thought, maybe this one is about writing.