"Let's start at the very beginning,
A very good place to start."

Maria - "Do-Re-Mi" from the Sound of Music

Many times the beginning is a very fine place to start. In fact the best place to start.

But there are times when starting at the beginning is definitely not the best option. The difficult email, the first draft, the project proposal.

You already know some of what you want to say, in fact you might have phrases, sentences, or paragraphs already mapped out. Those parts aren't a problem. But coming up with an opening, that can be difficult. Sometimes it can be paralysing.

Then your phone beeps or the calendar reminder for the next Zoom meeting jumps onto your desktop, and you're still no further forward with this thing than when you started. When you finally get back to it you go round the same loop again, and again, and again.

But you don't need to start at the beginning. You can start anywhere. Start in the middle of a paragraph, or in the middle of a sentence. If you know how you want to start the second paragraph but you’re struggling with how to open, start with what you’ve already got. When it's finished, no-one will ever know that you didn't put this thing together in a conventional "start at the beginning, finish at the end" order.

Many times when I'm not sure how to open something that I'm writing I'll start somewhere else. By the time I've got some ideas onto the page, I usually find that filling in the gaps for the parts I've been struggling with is easier than it was before.

I don't have an explanation yet for why this seems to work. Perhaps getting the parts of the message that you're already confident about out of your head frees up the mental horsepower to work on the difficult bits.

You can also think of it like assembling a jigsaw. You could start in the top left-hand corner and work your way across every row in turn until you get to the final piece in the bottom right, but that's not that much fun. Isn't it easier to put together small parts and connect them together to build up the whole picture?

The bottom right can be an excellent place to start. If you know where you’d like to end up then begin with that and work your way back.

You can start anywhere. Start where it's easy. Start where it's simple. Start with what you're already happy with. Then you can go back and fill in the gaps.