The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.

The beginning is the part you can only write once you have finished. Whatever you are making, the opening depends on everything that comes after it, which is why writing it first is such reliably wasted effort and why it so often gets rewritten last. Understanding arrives at the end of the work, not at the start. Starting badly is therefore not a failure but the normal route.

If you are stuck on how to open something, skip it and write the middle. Come back when you know what the thing actually is. The beginning will be obvious then, and it will take a tenth of the time.