Karl Whitney: ‘With writing, just begin: You don’t always have to know where it’s going’

Where to begin can be difficult for a writing project. Like a song, the opening line of a work can make a real impact

If you learn to spot what works, then you’re also identifying what doesn’t work. This implies many false starts. File picture

Where should you begin? It’s difficult to start a writing project.

Or, to put it another way, it can be easy to start a piece of writing — maybe a book project or perhaps something shorter — but difficult to sustain it. How does something go from being a one-sentence idea to something much bigger?