It all starts at Chapter One ... doesn't it?

A New Year's resolution is only broken when the year's actually over, right? I wouldn't say I'm on track at the moment to meet my fiction writing goals for the year, but there are another eight and a bit months.

I did get around to reading a book this month with the enticing subtitle of "Everything you wanted to know about starting your novel!". Jennifer Bacia's Chapter One, although aimed squarely at "popular fiction" writers (I hate that term: why can't what I want to write be called popular too?), still gave me a few tips.

Most interestingly, it used actually beginnings from her novels and explained why she'd used particular techniques. Knowing the mechanics of her novel openings even nudged me to check one out of the library, a kind of romance-thriller-bestseller ... but once I'd got past the opening that whole "bestseller" style just drove me mad. What's wrong with me, I often wonder--I can sit through a soapie on TV, and even the odd really bad movie (though I tend to fall asleep), and usually I refuse to give up on any book I start--but give me a "bestseller" (that is, from the "popular fiction" section of the bookstore) and I get irritated so fast that I'd rather be washing dishes than reading it.