The First Line

When I was 11 this story started and ended abruptly. The group of barbarians were seeking out the evil one and were told that she was the only one that could help. So they went to an Inn and she was sitting there waiting for her and she went off with them and killed the evil one and they lived happily ever after.

Then when I was older it started on a deserted snow laden street and a child seeing the stranger approaching. It tried to be mysterious but fell short and there was a very cumbersome first line.

Then, somewhere in the past, the story started at its end.

Our princess was wrapped in furs somewhere deep in the mountains, alone beside a rouring fire reminiscing about her past; her children, her husband, her life and family.

There is a merit to begining with the end. That form of writing will cause some suspense. You may know how it ends in that moment but how the characters get there is the journey.

But then I realise that the changes in this story are, in a way, snapshots of my own life.

I wrote the end during a dark time of my own, when it seemed everything was ending, my marriage, my work and the relationships I held dear. A friend had died and it seemed the one person that knew me best in this whole world was gone. I had this impending sense of doom, and sense of ending.

I dont like growing old it gives me the senses of the inevitable. And all of us have the same inevitable end. Thats the way my depression goes. It tells me that the inevitable ending is going to happy whatever I do; loved ones will die, you too will grow old, things will leave and change....and then it wispers to me that there is a way of avoiding all that pain and grief... thankfully I have never listened.

However it is clear that I was in a. dark place when I wrote the ending first. I was felt as old and cold as our princess does huddled by the fire with nothing but the weakness of. ageing and the fading firelight to look forward to.

I was constantly looking back as I did not have the strength to look forward, everything was closing in.

My writing is an escape for me. I can do what I want and go where I want with it.

Whatever i write it will always be infulenced by where I am in my own life; the person i am and who I will become.

Wrtiing helps us to sort out the muddle of thoughts that our minds create. It helps to order and release you from anything you do not need.

But unfortunately it isnt helping me with an opening line.