There was a period of time that I always seemed to have that first line ready to go. Then it disappeared. Now, sometimes I struggle and work on it for an hour, getting more and more frustrated. I try to remind myself to push past that, just get to the part I can write, and circle back. Sometimes once the body of work, the chapter, the act, or whatever is finished, then I see how I can use that first line as a hook and tie into the rest of the material or how to pair it with a last line. Other times I think the benefit of "skipping" the first line is then I get out of my head, write well, and you can suddenly see a way to start either somewhere else, or where your flow started. Books like Rules of Attraction or Who They Was feel like good examples of the latter, when they start right in midsentence, or in the middle of the action, so the reader almost feels like they are running to find answers to the questions they have.
