Your First

Well, after succumbing to cyber stalking for a short while, I realized that it’s time I turn my attention to more productive forms of playing the waiting game.

So, I’ve started dancing the hokey pokey with the first chapter of my new project.  The first five pages are always the slowest going for me.  It’s where I set up characters, relationships and setting and get a feel for how the rest of the story is going to play out, despite my already-written outline. 

Even though it only takes me about 8 weeks minimum to get a rough draft down, one week of the eight is spent on the first chapter. 

I swear- it’s an average of a page a day in the very beginning.  Why?  Well, my ritual goes something like this:

I knew even as I walked walk…  wait, is this present tense or past tense?

I know even as I headed  head towards the  Dammit!

I knew even as I directed our  click our group towards the…the...the...the what? Where the hell ARE they again?

Emily knew even as she…   oh dear god.

At this rate, I start to wonder how I ever managed to write an entire book in the first place.  Maybe the first three were flukes?  But then I looked back on the post I wrote when I began my third book and realized, this is just how it works for me!

The good news is, once characters, feeling, setting, and voice are in place, the thing usually skyrockets out of control and I spend most of my time running a second behind what my fingers are typing and struggling to bind the whole thing down to the original outline with steel wire so the plot doesn’t go AWOL.

So how does it work for you guys?  Stress first and then ride the tide?  Or go with the flow and then go back and adjust?

First Chapter Hokey Pokey

'You put your one sentence in.  You take your one sentence out.  You put another sentence in and you shake it all about.'

K, enough singing.  After lots of thought, daydreaming, scheming and planning-  I finally got down to business and began work on my third writing project.  The outline is finished and I sat down at my computer yesterday, cracked my knuckles, and started typing.

Getting through the first chapter of my manuscript takes me a LONG time. 

 I don’t know these people (my characters) very well yet.  For the moment, they’re functional.  They are there to move my story where it needs to go. 

It’s not until I’m about a third of the way through the book that I find my ‘groove’- I get to know my characters in and out and their words and actions flow freely. 

I’ve got a long way to go, though, before I arrive at that point.  Right now I write a paragraph or two.  I stop and think.  I write a little more.  Stop.  Go back and reread.  Write a little more. 

I struggle to push it forward, through the doubt and lack of ideas until the point where things seem to take on a life of their own.

I’m five pages in and there’s already an important character who just popped up out of nowhere.  No idea who she is.  I look at my outline.  Is she in there? Nope.

This is my first time writing first person AND present tense.  And the story is from a boy’s point of view.  I hadn’t planned on him having a girlfriend right at the beginning.  But here she is just the same, helping me to move my story along and now that I take the time to think about it- she will also add so much more tension and drama to the situations to come.

 I wish I could take credit, but when I’m writing, things come as a complete surprise to me.  Most of the time it doesn’t even feel like they’re my words or ideas.   I know all you other fellow writer skitzos will understand what I’m talking about.

So tell me, how you do get through your first chapter?  Do you stop and analyze every little thing until you've got the perfect platform?  or do you just write whatever comes to mind and figure you’ll straighten it out at editing time?