Begin at your beginning is the only place your story can start, but you can begin writing at any place you choose and work your magic as you further your writing experience and continue to learn.
My beginning can also be yours. I mean that to be a hint at guidance, or guile if that term suits. You can plagiarize another beginning or another style or…the list is endless. I have started many of my writings at the end and also somewhere in the middle and made the beginning later.
Begin at your beginning requires a concentrated effort of purpose and imagination to find the means to continue until you finish. I hate typing THE END at the point the story stops because the story never truly has an end, only the prospect of an adjacent story of some sort. Consider what your story is. Does it need to start as your original writing began or can you begin writing and clarify and restructure and embellish and make better and, and, and, until your manuscript is your pride and joy. I intend to rewrite every story I published. I have been informed that Lovers Lies and Lilies https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/424666 was too hurried and part of the story could be improved, that Emilee’s Story was not focused on her and her lover and the children.
Begin at your beginning without a single thought except creating a work for the day you can read before you hit the final save button. Something may look to be unnecessary and may be made completely germane by adding another sentence or paragraph or changing how you presented the scene or action or description. Little things mean a lot is a adage that should always be foremost in an authors thoughts. I could do an instructional class for a week on word usage and sentence structure. Correct writing does not exist. We are individuals and unique. So should our stories, writing styles, word and sentence structure, description and, and, and be when the aggravating THE END is typed. Should it have a question mark following????
Rewriting is the bane of every author. Everything done from the first word requires intelligent thought. I often pause to settle back and read the work I did without looking for problems to correct.
Reading for the pleasure of reading being done, I turn to the inglorious task of rewriting and when that chore is finished I do another reading for pleasure of the experience, slowly we can feel free to make changes as the experience progresses. People tend to use commas inordinately and incorrectly. I feel it is better to have what some people may say is a missing comma than change the structure of the sentence. Common people sometimes do not speak in a manner that warrants the use of a comma.
He said or she said can be overused. Describe an action, gesture, facial expression, body movement, followed by the phrase that fits and can be seen as part of the story. Your readers may be your best teachers, but consider why someone thinks as they do. It is your story and only you have the ability to justify the finished manuscript. These bits of wisdom are a fraction of what you need to become an accomplished author in your own way and purpose. To thine own self be true. Remember that common sense is not really all that common.