It’s tempting to start writing or typing and then immediately delete it. Writing my first book, I spent months rewriting the first page without getting beyond the first chapter. However, I only knew exactly what needed to be kept or deleted from the opening chapter and first few sentences when I had finished writing the book.
When you start writing, the characters can take you in many directions. You must trust your intuition and your characters and allow them to navigate the journey. Once you’ve reached your destination, the end, you can go back to the start – to those crucial first few words – and begin to edit.
That’s another reason I love NaNoWriMo. It forces you to get words on the page, to get to the end of the month with 50,000 words. Once you have them, then (and only then) you can edit, adding or deleting appropriately for your characters and your creation.