The Starting Line

The good people at WordPress, in their helpful and informative way, suggest beginning a post by writing a paragraph, “the building block of all narrative”—so called, I’m guessing, because it is potentially substantive &/or ultimately chunky. Either way, I have to disagree. If you want to build a narrative, use Tinkertoys: Link a bright, slender Once upon a time stick to a What happened next? spool. Need a plot twist, backstory, revelation, or surprise? Spoke by spoke, spool by spool.

Jack Gantos once said that if you write a page a day, at the end of a year you have a book. Voila! Get out those Tinkertoys and get cracking.