Book Review: Hooked

It has been a year since I've worked on a writing project. This activity that informed my identity for so long is now inaccessible. Despite distance and therapy, the trauma of finding my son mid-opioid overdose last June and the ongoing struggles we face with him have sucked my writing dry. I've made a few attempts, but the motivation and spark have vanished. The only image I can use to illustrate where I'm at is a PBS documentary I once watched called Victorian Slum House. In it, modern day families shed their current conveniences and schedules to live in a mock Victorian community. This is the level of hardship I face when I contemplate working on a piece of writing or a new project. It is like asking me to leave behind all the amenities I'm used to for a hard-scrabble lifestyle. Writing is just too arduous!

The other day, I thought, "Well, if I cannot rouse myself to work on something new, maybe I should polish something old." So, I brought up the middle grade novel which holds the most promise. Formatting it into the proper manuscript form for submission might be a worthy project. I hoped to rekindle the dying embers of my writing passion, submerged from trauma and tension. Alas, this depressed me all the more.

My old writer's group helped polish the first paragraph several years ago. I had offered three different opening paragraphs and welcomed their insights and votes. Yet, when I opened the file now, I realized even the best of those three attempts was pure rubbish! Garbage! I set the paragraph aside as if it might explode in my hands if held too long.

Instead, I picked up a book on my personal shelf called Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go, by Les Edgerton. The book made my task feel even more daunting. It focuses on inciting incidents, initial surface problems, and story worthy problems. It encourages you to consider anew where your story should begin. The book provides so many excellent examples. Indeed, when Edgerton dissected the story elements and beginning finesse in a few movies, I sought those movies and watched with a writer's eye. Now, I had more aspects to digest. My opening was truly boring; it needed a complete overhaul. 

Somehow I wrote an opening that is better. I may still work it up more, but it is sound enough to escape the excuse against starting the manuscript re-write. Before I begin, however, I may seek even more instruction. I plan to re-read another one on my shelf, The First Five Pages. If I'm going to get back into writing by the back door of editing old manuscripts, I might as well make the first five pages count. Besides, my mojo for reading hasn't failed me like the writing energy has!