Good first lines are critical. They have a singular duty, to involve the reader and kidnap them for the length of the book.For that reason, first lines and the opening chapters frequently become all that is ever written of a would-be authors novel. Yet the authors of those few chapters have the entire book locked in their head.

Participating in NaNoWriMo teaches authors to write the entire bookbeforethey begin editing.

In your first draft, DON’T OBSESS over the small things and the finer details as these will derail your work.You will never get past the first chapter if all you can focus on is writing a brilliant opener. Write the entire story as quickly as you can, let it sit for a month or two while you do something completely different, THEN come back to it and focus on shaping the prose. Once you…