Naomi Dawn Musch

     As I prepare to start work on a new manuscript, I harbor the looming fear of whether or not I'm beginning at the beginning. I mean, am I beginning before the beginning? Did I miss something? Have I started after the beginning? These are worthwhile questions.

     In my mind's eye, I know what sort of action is taking place at the start of the story, but to flesh that action out takes a certain skill that only dabbles at back story while intentionally pulling the reader into immediacy. To be quite truthful, this never gets any easier.

     So, here's my plan. I will write a beginning, the beginning as I most suspect it to be. But it will be just bare bones. It's flesh will be built upon movement, flow, momentum. If it can't be, then it must not be my beginning.

     Finding my way into a story is like roaming about in my wet swimming suit, searching for the right door to my hotel room when I've forgotten the key and room number. Is it this turn, that door, the next floor? I'm getting cold and worried!

     A big part of the picture in deciding beginnings is choosing voice/POV. Who will open the narrative of my story? In the case of my current dilemma, will it be the Heroine, or the Antagonist-Turned-Hero? The scene hangs on the moves of the antagonist, but the story is a romance built on the heart decisions of the heroine.

     Such questions.

     It will all come down to tackling the job—being willing first to put cyber-ink on those first pages to find out what sort of weight they can carry. And then, willing to hit the delete key later on.