Exquisite Moments Of Utter Stupidity

I will write a book with this title. 

These are the types of notes I have in my 'ideas' folder. 

It's kind of embarrassing. 

But I can't delete them. 

There is a beginning of a poem that starts and when the moon is my companion. 

And I am no poet. Trust me. 

Another single line entry reads: Love, the ultimate goal, achieved only through heartbreak and walking a line towards a goal you often doubt exists.

Not sure what I was going for with that. Some sort of self help book? Oh, how hilarious. 

And there this paragraph that makes me laugh - Like some sort of post graduation cliché, except I was twenty-two, not nineteen, I found myself employed at a coffee shop called Bitches Brew. Only snarky females need apply. Also, I lived in a dive apartment with two other girls I barely knew. Gretchen, a wannabe folk singer, who wore toques all year round, and Polly, a waif-thin girl who aspired to be the next screenplay writer of modern chick things and who took up smoking to better suit the persona. Highly allergic to cigarette smoke and folk music, I didn’t exactly enjoy my room-mates. But they were better than my last ones—my parents.  

Perhaps I was going to write the next best disenchanted youth novel, or guide to falling in and out of love.

 

Is it just me who has this unreasonable attachment to every silly little bit and bobble of story I create? 

The folder is ever-expanding. 

First lines, paragraphs, dreams, novels with twenty thousand words that I never finished. I am overflowing with these files, which would be scraps of paper if this was fifty years ago.

Now I kind of wish they were scraps of paper. 

It's easier to forget about random files buried in my dropbox in a top secret folder. 

Harder to hide a book. 

If I had one, I'd keep it by my bed and add ideas to it every night.  

But that might only add to my abundant idea problem. 

First Lines

I have been thinking about first lines lately. You know, the ones you write at the beginning of your novel to grip and entrance the reader. It's those first words that really set up the stepping stones of your novel. They can encourage you to continue crafting or tempt you to toss yourself over the side of a bridge. Okay, maybe that's a bit much.

Regardless, I got to mulling over my first lines. You see, I started this new book. It's going. Not very fast, but it is going. It took me awhile to figure out where to begin. Is it just me, or is the pressure on the first paragraph astronomical  When you set out to query agents, they are going to decide off of the first four or five pages whether they want to see more of masterpiece it took you two months to six years to complete, give or take depending on who you are and what sort of novel it is.

Anyway, the new first line to my story is:

Like some sort of post graduation cliche, I found myself working at a coffee shop called Bitches Brew, where only snarky females seemed to get hired, and living in a dive apartment with two others girls I barely knew. 

Maybe it isn't the greatest first line ever put to paper (virtual paper, that is), but it allowed me to delve deeper into the story. 

Because I love getting distracted, here are a couple first lines from three of my other novels: 

1. Most believe the decline started with the earthquakes and floods, but Falcon knew it began with greed. 

2. Despite what Carla Wells told everyone, I wasn’t jealous of her and found the idea itself insulting. 

3. When he entered the world, the odds were already stacked against him. 

First lines are both my favourite things and the bane of my existence. Only because I am being overly dramatic, though. Let's have share-fest 2013!

What are you first lines?