As a writer, sometimes you need a new beginning. Pascal said, “The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.” As an editor that’s one thing we always looked at. Did the story begin in the right place? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it began one chapter after the first chapter you wrote. Maybe two chapters after the first chapter. Maybe you had to write those first chapters to settle into the real first chapter, eliminating the little things here and there that you need to get out of the way for the real story to begin. I learned this in a really tough way. I hung onto those first two chapters through the first two drafts. And the story didn’t come that way. It had to come a third way. I dropped the first two chapters. Then things opened up.

John

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