Time for Breakfast

Yes, it's time for breakfast - or possibly mid morning break... I'm not quite sure. Whatever time it is, I've just made coffee and cheese on toast. Ok, so it's not really nice cheese on toast - it's toast with cheese squares leftover from Sunday's barbecue but it will do...

I've made a good start on writing this morning and have finished the first draft of Chapter 1. I've been writing this story for a little while now but didn't have a beginning. That might sound odd but I sometimes find that I don't know quite where a story is going to start. Rather than letting this stop me writing as it can easily do, I try and just get on with it and get some writing done.

In schools I visit children often say they struggle with a beginning for their story so they sit there starting at the paper - they've been told that they need a really good beginning that will grab the reader and get them interested in reading the rest of the story - Quite a daunting task...

This idea of grabbing the reader's interest can easily halt the writing process so I try to encourage children to just start writing what they know... perhaps they have a piece of dialogue or a part of a scene in their heads but they don't know where it will fit in the story... "That's good!" I say. "Write it down and see what happens. You can worry about the beginning later."

It's all well and good saying this but I know myself that I feel restless if I haven't got the beginning sorted so it's a real weight of my mind knowing that I know where the story I am writing starts. 


That's it for now... coffee break over... on with the story.