The problem of beginning …

The Southern novelist and poet George Garrett, director of creative writing at the University of Virginia when I was a graduate student there, always said that if you’re having trouble getting into a story (or a chapter or a scene) you should use all five sentences right at the start, preferably in the first paragraph:  touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight.  Your scene will jump to life, and you’ll have an easier time falling into the dream world of the story.