We have many candidates. Gathering ideas. Outlining. Drafting. Revising. Editing. Submitting. Or simply getting started, particularly the first sentence. As a writer by a hobby, a profession or a virtue, we have different experiences in the torture of writing process. But of all the hardest part about writing, first sentence is ought to be in the first place, at least in my case. It is not the second sentence, the third or the last. It is not the second body paragraph or the concluding paragraph. It will always be the first sentence. The problem is not what we’ll be writing but rather how will we start it.
Image from after-the-party via Deviantart
Before I mislead you, I am not offering any help or ideas on how to get by this condition or dilemma. (But I certainly need one.) When I open my laptop’s lid and plunge into a word processor, I am faced with a blank document for a half an hour and is subject to extension or lesser if I ever get tempted to watch videos. Or worst: I never get to start anything at all. At that moment, there are many things in my mind. Many but none of deemed worthy to be the first sentence. I wrote the first sentence of the first paragraph of this post after my fourth revision, luckily.
There ought to be some sort of explanation for this phenomenon. Seriously, scientist should study and invest their time on this field study. They can save billions of wasted hours. Plus, any one can benefit. Do other people took pill, utter a mantra, do a ceremony before they write? How do they write the first sentence like that?
Brainstorming or Freewriting are no help. They are effective in getting ideas but no near on pushing you to write the first sentence. Writing process are futile. It feels like a large tube full of ideas gets clogged through a cloth and the cloth is no near in your conscious reach. It will always be beyond the reach. Ideas just hit you without the effort for looking for them.
However, once I get started writing the first sentence all the other sentences follows. It is like they are playing Follow the leader. Sometimes there are many of them that I can’t stop writing. Even though I get to start the later sentences or the other paragraphs first, I feel anxious and disturbed unless I write the first sentence.
Candidates are now sitting in front of their ballots, waiting for your votes. What’s yours?
First things first, I never open up a word processor to write. At least when it comes to blogging, I write directly on WP editor. That’s just finer than MS Word or so.
Then, I don’t usually lack ideas in blogging. I open up my laptop or turn on my desktop when I want to listen to a song, read others’ blogs, read newspaper, check emails and so on. But when a topic strikes me, I log in to WordPress.com dashboard and open up the New Post panel. That’s how my blogging has been going on so far. The only drawback in my blogging is the language. I often get stuck at English language. I don’t find the appropriate word or just the appropriate way to say a particular thing.
But when it comes to writing fiction, things work in a different way.
Why is it finer than MS Word?
Good for you. I usually have ideas to write but I just don’t know how to shape them. I also read other people’s blog, read New York Times but I rarely get an idea. Usually, I come up on my own. For me, I don’t know how to express myself in my dialect only English. I can for a while but I usually get help with English to convey the message, all the time.
I think Bangla is a popular language. My cellphone has a Bangla language also in my printer.
Bangla is probably the fourth most speaking language around the world. But I’m not much of a fan of Bangla because none other than Bangalis understand bangla language.
I think I kind of lose the writer’s mood when opening up MS Word, writing the post, copying it to the editor and all those works. I do, however, sometimes copy-paste text from WP editor to MS Word to grammar check them because I think MS Word has the best grammar checker option and After the Deadline is a fail compared to MS Word.
But on my first draft, I like to write it inside my blog dashboard.
Oh so that’s why. My roommate is slightly addicted in Bangla that he tried buying food in the market in your language trying to decode the meaning. But I guess Mandarin is in the first place? Then the English.
Maybe its because of those red and green swigly lines. Hawthorne Effect, if you know what I mean.
Um, I guess I missed it. Is your roommate a bangali? Or he just likes the language? And what about the food in the market? I didn’t quite get it.
No, he’s a Filipino but he likes language, Bangla is not an exception. Food about the supermarket where there many isles of shelved foods. We can only find foreign foods in the mall and they are expensive 🙂
Hey!
I have the exact same problem. First sentences are the worst! They do set the tone of your whole writing so there is so much pressure to write a really, really good one.
I’ve spent hours getting the first paragraph of one papers to be perfect, but this really is not a good thing to do in college because it wastes a lot of time.
So I’ve learned to do this…. write everything else first. Just jump right into your body paragraphs (if you know what you’re going to say) and when you’re done, go back to that first sentence. It comes much more easily.
However I’m happy to say that I don’t have this same pressure with blogging! I can’t be too stressed out about my first sentence when there’s no pressure about who’s going to look at it or what kind of a grade I’m going to get on it.
But you shouldn’t be too worried about your first sentences because your blog posts are very interesting!
Anyways, good luck with your writing!
Thanks for the recommendation. They are quite helpful and I’m willing to check them out. Regarding pressure, I usually feel them regardless of school paper or just blog post. I guess that is also something I have to work at. 🙂
I’ve gotten into an almost obsessive compulsion of writing down “prompts” in a notebook, which are little blurbs of sentences from magazines, other books, even my own writing. They’re just random bits from receipts (“Toilet Paper…$14.95”) or a description of a photograph. I have whole notebooks just filled with these prompts and, when I feel hard-up for an idea or a first sentence, I open up my prompt books, take a look at the next one on the list, and formulate a first sentence out of that.
It can be challenging to think of a whole story that could be build from your grocery receipt, but it can be a lot of fun, too! The key, though, is once that first sentence is written, there’s no going back until the last sentence is written as well. Then you can go back and change it, improve it, make the whole story better. But just start something and keep writing and you never know where you might turn up!
It’s kind of odd, I know, but it’s been working really well for me!
I think I’ve experienced that dilemma way back when I was an aspiring novelist. But now that I’m blogging, it seems like spontaneous outbursts is the key 🙂
I was reading your “conversation” with Sajib and… Spanish comes after Mandarin and English 😀
As regards your post… I usually don’t have your problem with first sentences, and whether I write on paper or directly on WordPress doesn’t really matter, I just switch between both methods. Ideas for my posts just come to me by themselves, then I think about them while I’m doing other things. So it’s not that I sit and say: what am I going to write? or HOW am I going to write it? Instead, I think about it while I’m about to sleep, while I’m taking a shower or when I’m washing the dishes, for instance. I try to figure out what my first sentences will be and it is after this that I come to the paper and write it (or computer, whatever). And sometimes (maybe most of the times) I don’t write in order. If I know what the last paragraph will be, I write it, then I go back to the beginning. I just let it flow.
I also have like a “book of ideas”. It’s actually a notebook were I write ideas I have and I don’t want to forget as I may not put them into practice right away. Some of those ideas have to be with my blog, others are possible presents for a friend’s birthday, or whatever comes to my mind!
Engler too have used a journal. I think I need one. Sometimes or most of the time. Ideas, just like you, strike when I don’t need it 🙂
Yeah! you’re sooo right ! I usually write on a paper using pen. And that paper would be full of crisscrosses. When I start the first sentence, I’ll cross it out if I don’t feel it. Until my writing starts on the middle line of the paper instead on the first. And yeah! When I already made the first sentence, striking my pen on the paper would be easy then.
Great post!