self editing

There you are sitting on your computer, or hunched over a phone, even a fancy pants iPad. Coaxing the shapes and loops to form a semblance of structure. You could be thinking of me, sitting in bed writing this or you could be stuck on a small phone or some such thing. But either way you go bumbling along on my words putting together my thoughts and making your own. You are in my world now.

There can, and likely are, entire writing courses on the first page. It may go without saying but a great many number of reasons why the first page is painfully important, stoking the flames of writer’s block for some, some choosing to ignore a ‘true’ first page and come back, pulling details out like a slow working dentist. The first page, at it’s most annoying, is the attention grabber – a way for some authors to get readers to buy a book, or to pull a person from their world into that of the story,or just to simply snatch up a reader’s attention. Plop down in nearly any book, fiction, non-fiction and there it is, like a shining beacon in the misty pages – the ‘first page’.

This is where I come in. I’ve written off and on most my memorable life and in those years of high school where putting words together and placing adjectives one right after another like a shopping list to grad school where I realized I wasn’t talented like my peers – I wrote some things. We’ll be going back, hopefully one a week (hopefully more than once) to the first peek into my brief life as a “writer,” and hack away, but explaining why/how my attacks. In this, my hope is to writer better and maybe, just maybe help someone else. Because writing isn’t easy.

First up, the first page of my unfinished novella: “Blue Whale.” Coming tomorrow.