Beginning

I apologize.

I admit it–I’ve been crushed by full-time work, overtime parenthood and the necessity of periodically digging out from the catastrophe du jour (most recently a twice-flooded basement). For fun, I sneak progress on my WIP at 4:00 am and feel guilty I’m not doing more. But you have never been far from my thoughts, dear reader.

Today, let’s talk about something fresh–something far from where I’m at right now. But maybe you’re there, at the jumping-off place.

Beginning.

What is more filled with bottomless hope and yet more fraught with peril, than beginning? The beginning of anything: be it school, work, love… life. But what I’m thinking of today is the beginning of stories.

They start with words, simple words, composed of letters, curved and straight; spattered on a page like a promised rain, the sort that makes you look up at kitten clouds and wonder: will it pour?

The seed that grew into HitList wasn’t an idea or a concept, but rather a simple sentence, generated in a brainstorming session where I challenged myself and my fellow bloggers to come up with One Hundred Opening Lines.

In that exercise, I had one particular sentence that I couldn’t stop thinking about. What kind of story was attached to it? I plucked it out, tried to guess and when I did, a dam broke. 1,500 words later, I realized an entire book was attached.

The seed that is Kwan Factor was a “what if” that occurred to me on a walk. From there, it went to a workshop scribbled on a scrap, and grew into a universe that I still inhabit.

Beginning.

Beginnings are limitless and treacherous, filled with vast hopes and wild unknowns. They beckon, they implore, they promise. They are an invitation, a bridge to another world, a ticket for an epic journey or an open door to another life. Take them, be it read or write them.

Begin.