Where I've been and where I need to go

I finally got round to finishing the editing of Hide and See yesterday.  I say 'finish' in that this draft is complete.  I don't doubt that there will be several thousand more edits after this (please let that be an exaggeration) but nonetheless, I feel it is complete enough to send off to various wonderful beta readers who offered to look at it for me.  Just as soon as I can remember who it was that offered all those weeks ago when I originally said I was going to finish it.

I did some work on book 2 earlier in the week as well.  I think the last thing I'd said on the blog was that I'd written chapter 3, but since then chapter 3 has become chapter 5 and I have written a different chapter 3 and a large chunk of chapter 1, along with various other bits from chapters 2-8.  Sound confusing?  Welcome to my head.

Unfortunately, chapter 1 isn't finished because I can't think how to start it (and thus the whole book).  My problem lies in the fact that Hide and See originally started quite slowly and I didn't like it.  I then edited it so that the first few chapters were much more exciting, something which I feel works much better.

Now, book 2 starts in a slow, quiet way.  Seeing a pattern here?  The problem is, I can't figure out a way to make the start more exciting given that the peaceful setting at the beginning is needed (for various reasons which I won't go into here).  So how do I create an engaging beginning?

I've been considering starting it with a vision of the (much more action-packed) future - ah, the joys of having a Seer for the main character! - but I'm worried that this feels too much like a starting-a-novel-with-a-dream thing.  Which is apparently very bad, according to a writing blog I read earlier this week.

This will be needing a lot of thought.

Anyway, on the whole I'm feeling more positive about book 2 than I was earlier in the week.  This is down to said editing of book 1 yesterday.  Having gone through the complete story (rather than the mismatched fragments which currently make up book 2) I got a clearer picture of where I've been and where I need to go.  And I actually found I quite liked my characters again, rather than finding them frustrating for not doing what they're told.