Writing Chronicles- Week Six

Nailing a perfect opening.

Photo Description: A picture of an open notebook with nothing written on its pages placed on a wooden background. A white pen is placed on the left side (yeah for left-handed writers!). Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Week Six

I am painfully aware that I have not written a single sentence of this book. Nothing. Not. A. Word.

I often get caught up on the first paragraph of anything I write and can’t move past it until I nail it. This has been my problem forever. It started in my first journalism class in undergraduate school when I understood the importance of that first paragraph in a news article and how not to “bury the lead”. This was only heightened when I worked on the first paragraph of my dissertation for years.

I’m a slow starter but I can pick-up speed once I get going but the getting started part is always the death of me. I have had at least a half-dozen possible openings swirling around in my head but haven’t landed on any of them enough to put them on paper. Once it gets on paper, I know I will be revising for a while before I can move on.

This is also me as a reader. I will read the first paragraph of an article or book and if it doesn’t catch my attention, I will start skimming or just put it down. I know it’s probably unfair not to let a piece of writing ‘warm-up’ before judging its value but I have stacks of books to read!! l’m a critical reader therefore, I am an equally critical writer.

It is not only connected to my reading style but also my need to develop a clear and consistent voice. I pay attention to voice a lot as a reader and like to play with it in my writing as well. However, I get annoyed when the voice changes in any form of writing so I try to pay close attention to it myself as a writer. I use this Substack as a way to play with voice because I know in longer form pieces, once I find a voice, I can’t move away from it.

Overall, I’m not sure how to overcome this need to stick a perfect opening. It may just be something I have to plan for and accept as part of my process.

Besides being paralyzed in writing my first paragraph, I’m in my favorite part of book writing- researching and I know I could stay here forever. I had a few more interviews this week and have several more upcoming and I enjoy all of them as they continue to surface ideas and direction for where this book could go.

And now that we are fully in election season, I’m soaking up every news article, speech, and interview to see how it can be incorporated into the book.

Week six is a wrap!