The scent and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

The first words in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale bring the reader straight into the scene which later editions of the James Bond novels and films have made very familiar. I had never thought of a casino having a sweat beyond its scent, and I find casinos nauseating at any time of day: but there it is; the murkiness of low lighting, the cigarette smoke, the smell of fear, the pain of loss. Casino.

Several years ago I wrote a lesson for Year Six Literacy based around the beginnings and endings of stories; the first and last sentences in a novel. I have never read any of Ian Fleming’s novels, and I’ve not seen all of the Bond films yet, but this first sentence of this first novel is a fitting opening because all of Bond on scene is there. It is a great sentence.

I am beginning to see stylistic traits coming out in my own writing, in no way as characteristic as this first sentence of Fleming which indicates an entire genre in fourteen words, but still ways in which people might identify me as the writer behind anonymous or pseudonymous works. I wonder if these things will remain.

I have noticed that I like using semicolons and commas, separating out my sentence with loads of punctuation. Charles Dickens did this. I have noticed I use some Germanic forms of grammar, like the Australian I am. I didn’t notice this until it was pointed out to me; British English has a different word order. I want to be able to write well in both dialects, but I also want to be able to write correctly in each one and not confuse the two.

I am still seeking a beginning, even as I refine my style and my use of the English languages I still wonder about the genres in which I shall write. Ian Fleming was a journalist for The Sunday Times, and also wrote fiction. He was a man whose business was writing and words, mine is not. I have been many things in the past, and I have written as a part of all of those things, but writing has never been the main part of what it is I have done. Now it will be, indeed it will at times be the only thing I shall do. It is the piece which dictates the opening sentence, the first thing read is close to being the last thing written and I am confident to wait: but still I would like to begin on the middle.

Only Connect: I choose to adapt Forster’s famous words as only commence; because connection only follows commencement. If I provide a substance, relational connections may be made. It doesn’t matter what I write at this point, only that I write: but it is important that I write of myself and from myself, even when only starting out.