Incident Record: Opening Sentence Trap
A first sentence has been rewritten until the paragraph it was meant to begin no longer exists.
Incident Report: Opening Sentence Trap
Date of incident: Ongoing, initial onset approximately three weeks prior.
Summary: Subject encountered an opening sentence trap while attempting to begin a written project. The first sentence, intended to establish tone and draw a reader into the piece, has been the primary site of editorial activity since the project began. The rest of the document contains a placeholder.
The placeholder reads: "Continue here."
Timeline:
Day 1: Subject opened a blank document. Typed a first sentence. Read it. Deleted it. Typed another. Saved the document and closed it. No further writing occurred.
Day 2: Subject reopened the document. The sentence from Day 1 was present. The subject had apparently not saved the deletion. The sentence was read. It was worse than remembered. It was deleted. A new sentence was written. The document was closed.
Day 5: Three new sentences tried and discarded. One was later recovered from a notes application where it had been copied for safekeeping.
Day 9: The first sentence was considered from the reader's perspective. From this perspective, it failed. It was rewritten.
Day 14: The sentence was shown to a colleague. The colleague said it was "interesting." This was recorded as inconclusive.
Contributing Factors:
The governing rule applies: if the opening sentence trap improves conditions for creativity, it may postpone creativity indefinitely. The first sentence feels responsible for proving the whole idea deserves to exist. This is not true. It feels true.
A good first sentence requires an idea. The idea exists. The subject knows the idea. The subject is waiting for the first sentence to confirm the idea is good enough to execute. The idea cannot be confirmed by the first sentence. The first sentence cannot be written without executing the idea.
Current Status: The first sentence is on version eleven. The document body contains the placeholder.
Action taken: None.