My editing block passed. I drew up a list of things that would go into the chapter and realized that they fell into two main headings, and that that was what would dictate the narrative flow.
Of course, it was Chapter 1. Chapter 1 is notorious for being a bugger to write--you have to set the groundwork for the rest of the book, so it's often easiest to write Chapter 1 after the rest of the book is written. That way you can also pilfer examples from the other chapters :-)
--Nat
Re:It's not just me!
gnat on 2002-05-08T19:01:19
Part of my Standard Advice to Authors (as received on stone tablets from Linda Mui) is "don't start with Chapter 1".--Nat
Re:It's not just me!
Elian on 2002-05-08T19:36:25
Sheesh--I made one of the classic mistakes. I'd best stay away from Sicilians and out of Asia, then...Re:It's not just me!
Simon on 2002-05-09T11:25:16
Maybe I'm just weird, as I tend to stand with Chapter 1. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.Asia
gizmo_mathboy on 2002-05-09T17:46:37
You can go to Asia, just don't start a land war.:-)
By the by, did you catch Clinton's thing on fencing masters?
Here's the link:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/user/wew/fencing/masters.htmlRe:It's not just me!
pudge on 2002-05-13T15:08:19
I didn't have much trouble working on the MacPerl book, in large part because of my fairly extensive journalism background, where one guideline -- not a rule -- is to not start with your lead paragraph. It's not a rule because a paragraph is much shorter and easier to write and rewrite than a chapter, and further, sometimes a lead paragraph helps to put the rest of the story into the proper perspective, if focus is a problem. However, the same principle holds: if you are having problems, just start writing. You can always come back later.
