I’ve won NaNoWriMo three times already, and I’m shooting for four. This time, though, I feel much less prepared than in years past. I feel like my grandmother eating a hamburger.

My grandfather loved to cook beef. He used to make these great big burgers. He always said the only way to cook a burger was to “carry it slowly through a hot kitchen.” He liked his meat rare enough that a good vet could get the cow back on its hooves in no time.

But I digress. Back to the burgers.

We did a lot of burger cooking back in the day. My grandmother would fix up her rare burger with lettuce and tomatoes and pickles and then she’d pick it up and turn it around and around in her hands, as if looking for a corner. Of course, both burger and bun were more or less round, so there was no “best place” to start. I’d sit and watch her, knowing that she did this every time. It always gave me the giggles. Eventually she’d give up looking for a place to start and just bite whatever happened to be right in front of her.

That’s how I feel about the story I want to tell for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I keep turning it around and around in my mind, looking for a corner to bite. But this isn’t Wendy’s. This story is round, not square. There’s no perfect place to start.

At least I started. That’s what NaNoWriMo is all about. I cranked out over 2,000 words, and at the very least I know what the next chapter is. So there you go. My first bite.