Family History Writing Challenge: Day 1

Day 1 of the Family History Writing Challenge I posted about a few days ago.  Now that it is actually here, I feel a sense of deep foreboding (as they say in the novels).  I had been feeling rather smug, thinking of all that lovely research I had so painstakingly done over the past few years, and all those month-long novel-challenges I had already participated in (and achieved the goal set).

And now here is another challenge, but this time it is different.  I am so used to writing fiction, where you make up what you want to make up - and here is a set of people who actually lived, with events which actually happened.  There can't be a 'deus ex machina' in this book - because there wasn't one in the real lives of the people it concerns.

I am finding it much more difficult to sit down and write the opening sentence.  Much more.  I am really rather glad for Scrivener, which splits up your book into chapters and scenes and pages.  Maybe I'll start somewhere near the middle of the book instead.  I'm not going to give in, though.