For me, the hardest part of writing a book is... getting started. The first chapter always seems infinitely more difficult to write and takes far more time than any of the remainding chapters. And, for that first chapter, the first paragraph of that first chapter can sometimes take hours. Hours! My initial attempts never fail to go something like this:
- Open Word,
- Write the title of the chapter at the top,
- Start to write the first sentence of the first paragraph of the chapter.
- Write a few sentences.
- Delete sentences written in step (4).
- Return to step (3).
This process is usually repeated until I get too frustrated and play Solitaire or, if I'm really frustrated, trek downstairs to play some Return to Castle Wolfenstein on XBOX Live (that never fails to pick up the ol' spirits).
This process is usually made even more frustrating because I already have, in the noggin', decided how I want some part of this chapter to look, but I really want to start from the beginning. Eventually, I capitulate and decide to just start writing a sentence in the middle of some paragraph somewhere in the middle of the chapter. And then it flows from there, usually. It takes a few days, sometimes a couple of weeks, before I'm back into the writing flow, churning out 10-20 on days I write, but prior to “getting in the zone” I am happy to put out one or two pages in a day's time. Meh.
(If you couldn't guess, I recently, as of this week, started working on another book.... Details to follow once I get back in the zone.....)