B- B For Beginnings

     Beginning. Everything, with the exception of one, has a beginning. Genesis is another word for beginning and sounds more epic and all around awesome-er. Every story has a beginning, with the possible exclusion of Memento, but I'm not going to get into that--I don't want to break my brain by thinking about it too hard. There's an old Chinese proverb that says: "Every journey begins with a single step". Wise words.

     When you begin a journey (writing a book, lifting weights, getting to know that one girl you really like), there is a definite moment in which you can say: "That's when all of this began, that's when things changed". Sometimes that moment is hidden.
   
     An example of this would be my book that I am almost finished with. I'm on the third/fourth draft. It is so different from draft uno that I have a hard time tracing the actual genesis. I spent about 30 seconds in between that last paragraph and this one, and I have figured out the 'real' genesis of my book, the moment it became all that it is now. I was sitting in a panel at the Omaha Film Festival that kind of sucked. So I decided to brainstorm. Within an hour and thirty minutes, I had turned my story from a one-nation war into a fantasy epic involving a war between... I'm getting ahead of myself.

     The point I'm trying to make here is that you need to take that first step. Go do it, get out there. Seize the moment. Write that first chapter or prologue. Pick up that barbell. Ask that girl out to Winter Formal coffee. The worst thing that happens is you die horribly, and let's face it, how likely is that to happen?

     Don't Google the statistics. It's very discouraging.