The first word is always the easiest

Seriously, there has hardly been a time in my life when I wasn't writing. . . . something.  My first efforts at fiction were not very good, and most of them have not survived.  Most of the manuscript of my first completed adult novel, written when I was 15,  resides in a file drawer; a few of its single-spaced pages are missing, but most of it is there.  Over the years I kept at it, and I had some success, publishing seven paperback novels between 1985 and 1996.  Then, for a variety of reasons, I stopped.  Or at least I stopped writing fiction. 

Now the time seems right to pick up the pen again, metaphorically speaking.