And they're off.....

... National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) started today.

I feel I am too busy with other crap in life to commit the time to write a 50,000 word novel. I do have until 11:59:59 pm GMT November 30 to sign up if I change my mind.

However, saying that, I of course had a couple ideas of openings come to mind. Now I must mention I had heard a little about nanowrimo about 2 weeks ago, but didn't know it was November, only learned today it was a November thing.

Any how, here is my start to a story that is likely to go no where...

---

'It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents.' ¹

Scratch that, to cliché

‘Call me Ishmael.’²

Scratch that, not sure of the name.

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’³

Scratch that, don’t think it’s all that true.

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’⁴

Scratch that, people might wonder at clocks striking thirteen.

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.’⁵

Scratch that, too wordy.

‘Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.’⁶

Scratch that, don’t need something so grandeur as an intro.

‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... ‘⁷

Scratch that, as grandeur as the last, and more cliché

‘A man walks into a bar...’

Scratch that, this isn’t a joke.

‘If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.’⁸

Scratch that, do I really want to go into that much detail?

‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’ ⁹

Scratch that, will the pages actually show that?

‘Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.’ ¹⁰

Scratch that, I don’t know any such man.

‘Mother died today.’ ¹¹

Scratch that, too sad.

‘The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.’ ¹²

Scratch that, not quite right.

‘I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.’¹³

Scratch that, would the character be like that?

‘Where now? Who now? When now?’¹⁴

Scratch that, too many questions.

‘The moment one learns English, complications set in.’¹⁵

Scratch that, true, but not a good start for this story.

‘I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.’¹⁶

Scratch that, don’t think it could be put together in the time left.

‘He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.’¹⁷

Scratch that, don’t really know much about fishing.

‘It was the day my grandmother exploded.’¹⁸

Scratch that, shocking, but not quite.

‘It was a pleasure to burn.’¹⁹

Scratch that, a little too masochistic.

‘Once upon a time...’

Scratch that, too much of a fairy tale start.

‘A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.’²⁰

Scratch that, don’t know where to go from there.

‘It was love at first sight.’²¹

Scratch that, too obvious.

‘I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.’²²

Scratch that, too true.

‘In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.’²³

Scratch that, can’t remember that advice.

‘You better not never tell nobody but God.’²⁴

Scratch that, could become too religious.

‘In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.’²⁵

Scratch that, too peaceful.

‘The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods’²⁶

Scratch that, not quite how it should start.

‘Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.’²⁷

Scratch that, sounds to textbook like.....

The author clicked on his count-down timer on his computer. The seconds ticking away: 2,548,453; 2,548,452; 2,548,451. He’d already wasted 43,549 seconds, just over 12 hours, and he still didn’t have an opening sentence. He was doubting his ability to get 50,000 word written in 30 days... make that 29 days, 11 hours and 42 minutes.

----------------------

Footnotes:

1 Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
2 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
3 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
4 George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
5 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
6 Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
7 George Lucas, Star Wars (1977)
8 J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
9 Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
10 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)
11 Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)
12 William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
13 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)
14 Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)
15 Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)
16 Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)
17 Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
18 Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)
19 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
20 Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)
21 Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
22 W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)
23 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
24 Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
25 Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
26 Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)
27 Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)


Bibliography:

Most of the quotes were found here:
http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/04/news/doc43e3e6b004381080724526.txt
and here:
http://www.pubquizhelp.34sp.com/art/book_first_lines.html