Don't know where to start on a writing project?

Recently, in a chat about her novel, a fiction writing student said snappishly: “I wouldn’t procrastinate at all, if I could only get the beginning right.”

I could feel her pain. The first page of a novel matters, because you’re trying to find the voice of the book. You know it when you’ve got it, as Hilary Mantel did, with the first paragraphs of Wolf Hall.

Since the student was frustrated and ready to toss away several weeks of work, I suggested that instead of trying to write the first page, she start at the end: “Why not write the final page?”

It often pays to start at the end.

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