In the Beginning . . .

No, my title for this blog post doesn’t refer to the first line of Genesis. I’m talking about beginning a new novel.

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.” ― Beatrix Potter

As Beatrix Potter said (I quote her often on this), there is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. And if a writer is a seat-of-the-pants writer like me, the second line of the quote is every bit as true. I don’t quite know where those first words will take me.

One of the reasons I write is to find out what will happen to the characters and how their story will end. Oh, certainly, I do have at least a general idea what will happen (plot). If I’m writing a romance, I know my hero and heroine will find hope for a happily ever after by the end of the book. But what will happen to them on the way to that ending? And what exactly will that ending look like when I get there? These are questions I seek to answer. And so I write.

I enjoy the way my characters sometime surprise me, the same way I hope they will surprise my readers. I love digging into their histories so I can better understand their motivations. Why do they do the things they do? Why do they believe what they believe? Why do certain words come out of their mouths?

We are all a sum total of everything we have experienced in life. All of our decisions, all of our life-lessons, all of our triumphs and trials have shaped us. The same is true for the characters in my books, and so I seek to know them better as I follow them on their current journeys.

I am in that delicious early stage of a new book, when anything is possible and I’m still discovering where those first words will take me. I’ll let you know where that is.

~robin