Slow going, but i'm past chapter 1!

Yay, i've finally typed my characters through chapter 1! Phew that was hard going.

I really seem to struggle with getting that ground work laid out. I know what i want, have it all planned out in notes and in my head but when it comes to writing it, there go the snails....

Finally, though they are away. Though i know it will be painful when i go back to edit (won't do that until the end though!)

Hopefully it will be a bit faster from here, but i'm not holding my breath. It seems to be my way. Struggle through, but at least i get there!

Aim for a little bit at a time and at least the word count goes up steadily.

Thanks to everyone for all your encouragement, it really helps! :)

How is everyone else going?

I think i hate first chapters

No really i do. Writing them is so hard.

I think i have started in the wrong place, yet again! Despite reading a tonne of Modern and Modern Heats and thereby first chapters, you'd think i'd have a pretty good idea of what should be in the first chapter.

Typing away this morning at 5am (i know!) it suddenly occurred to me that i have my hero and heroine apart for most of the first chapter and they don't meet until the very end. Well that is the plan. Now i think i have to get them together sooner, so cutting out a bit of the backstory - yes they have a past, very recent - and hopefully weaving it in a bit later.

I had this problem when i first wrote the first version of this story for the Harlequin comp in November. I had them on their holiday in Vanuatu where their affair started, and then realised that this was the backstory and not the beginning. It was perfect if i was writing a Single Title.

I love single title novels. Read them voraciously. Really want to publish one and Secrets and Lies is a Single Title novel. That is my ultimate goal, but while i work away at that story in the background i am working at the category niche.

Am i trying to do too much? Am i trying to do something that is just not me?

Why is this so frustrating?

Does anyone else have such difficulties?

If nothing else comes of this story, i will finish it. I am not one to leave something unfinished, it will bug me until my dying day! So this story and the other, oh i think half dozen category ideas will get written. I would really like for them to be read and published, but if not, at least i would write and finish them. If only i can get over the first chapter problem. Grrr!