NEEDLING

Trying to get writing. That first sentence is the hardest. I know where I want to go but how do I get started? What will take me on my way? Do I start with the name of one of my principal characters and tell the reader that he’s standing there pondering life? That’s pretty boring. My principal character is a young woman around eighteen, but neither her nor her boyfriend come into the story for yet a few pages, which leaves me with the old man she works for, the one person who along with his wife and colleagues will change this young woman’s life in ways neither her nor most anybody else can imagine. So how do I start.

Can’t I simply say:

Mr. Polk stood by his window staring in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower while his guests sitting around the diner table sat silently waiting for their host to come out of his reverie.

It gives some necessary information. For example that he’s not alone, that we’re probably around diner or lunch time, that considering that he can see the Eiffel tower from his window, that he “ponders”, that he has guests sitting around a diner table silently waiting for him, then we’re probably talking about a rich respected man living in a posh apartment. All this is good. I just don’t like starting with the name of the person.

In my treatment, I have:

We meet three couples getting up in age.

That’s direct, and just fine for a treatment or an outline, but it won’t do for anything else.

He could see the Eiffel tower from his window, though he wasn’t really looking at it, nor at the bateaux mouches slowly making their u-turns, docking and unloading their tourists on the quai of the river.

The story takes place in France, partly in Paris... but that’s not the point of the story, and I don’t want Paris to be a central element of the story, though it does affect the narrative... I just cannot have it so predominantly in the beginning.

I'll figure it out.