First lines of the novel I won't be writing today:
"For three weeks or more, the letter carrier struggled to shove more mail into his mailbox. After two notices, the electric company showed up and put a bicycle lock on his circuit breaker, disconnecting his service…”
First lines of the novel that I was too busy to write today, because I was busy writing:
"As sun set on the mountaintop, the hermit suddenly wondered — almost aloud — if he was crazy. It was not an epiphany, not in any spiritual sense. It started like an ache, like a pebble in one's shoe. Twilight faded, and his mind capsized, sinking into an icy sea of panic.
All night he sat in the moonlight shadows of a sycamore…”
First lines of the novel I'm not writing today:
"If you asked his friends, they might say he began to crack the day he drove up into the mountains and took 200 pictures of a clear, blue sky. Or the day he showed up at her house in his muddy pickup truck with a tent in tow, carrying a boombox like he'd seen in a movie, prepared to stay for as long as it took. But that wasn't when it started. It started 17 months earlier, in a hospital cafeteria, under the watchful eyes of the orderlies. It started 24 inches above a Silite food tray…”
First lines of the novel I shamefully failed to write today:
"He awoke, feeling like Lazarus, back from the dead, as though he'd spent the evening dancing across the River Styx, and somehow survived--the protagonist of a postmodern novel, impossible to retell.
She lay beside him, still, sleeping in the morning light, smelling of used gin and cigar ash. The distance between them could not be bound by their king-sized bed. The world outside their apartment window was abuzz with the throbbing thrum of sirens…”
First lines of the novel I won't write today:
"It's me or YOU,' she said, holding two guns. With her right hand, she pressed the heavy barrel of one to her temple. In her left hand, her finger squeezed against the trigger of a .44 aimed at his chest.
The burst of epinephrine and dopamine that human physiology prescribes for moments like these somehow failed him…”
First lines of the novel I had no time to write today:
"In isolation, one isn't encumbered by apologies. She learned this quietly, and shared it with no one. Snow fell outside her window, fell until her rooftop creaked like a pair of old knees, fell until the single set of footsteps to her front porch was indiscernible from the rest of the powdery mountainside…”
First lines of the novel I'm not going to write today:
"He sat, strapped into the Captain's seat, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead as the shuttle's engine roared to life beneath him. Quite suddenly, unexpectedly, he remembered that day in his first-grade classroom…”
First lines of the novel I won't write today:
"It was 7 a.m. on a Saturday in July when he dropped off his key. The Mississippi Delta was already hot; his tee-shirt clung to his back as he stepped out of the pickup and made his way up the dusty driveway to the front porch…”
First lines of the novel I'll have no time to write today:
"They discovered their love for each other in the ripeness of Autumn. That's what García Márquez called it — that unexpected moment when an ordinary tree blossoms and bears an exotic new fruit…”
First lines of ANOTHER novel, "Angels in the Architecture," that I didn't write today:
"Together they stood, before that staircase built by St. Joseph himself, in the chapel where miracles were common. The smell of rose oil and warm candle wax hung in the air, becoming a single holy scent, as ancient and sacred as Rome itself.
In a moment of weakness, he pulled her close, and almost confessed. The wire taped between her breasts was listening…”
First lines of the novel I had no time to write today:
"In that bitter moment, she realized that she was no longer 'his,' as she'd long perceived. Instead, he was HERS. Her responsibility. Her problem. And her burden to bear, through this life — and possibly the next…”
First lines of the novel I stubbornly refuse to write today:
"When he was hurting, he hummed along with Antony & The Johnsons, his sobs mirroring, note for note, each falsetto, each wavering crescendo. He remembered a time when they were on fire - first ablaze, roaring, then, later, smoldering…”
First lines of the novel I didn't write today:
"The first of December faded like an ache — nearly imperceptible. He remembered every tiny significance the date carried... His grandparents' anniversary, married 62 years. It faded, much like the memory of a distant morning rainstorm…”
First lines of the novel, “KING JEREMY, THE WICKED,” that I probably won't be writing today:
"The destruction began long before that incident on the playground. It started in the womb. It festered in a lonely crib, as soon as he was brought home from Seattle's Mercy West Hospital…”
First lines of the novel I won't be writing today:
"It was the Golden Age of archaeology, and they were strangers — tossed together on the whim of an assignment clerk they'd never met, sitting somewhere in the musty halls of academia. It was a new dig, Day One, and tensions had reached a fever pitch…”
First lines of the novel I won't be writing today:
"'WHO IS YOUR CO-PILOT?!?' the controller's voice crackled across the radio. The black box recorded it all. There was more radio silence, except for the rapid beeping that confirmed that the plane had rolled dangerously starboard. Capt. Rogers — Ahab, his buddies called him — was dead, and the cockpit was empty…”
First lines of the novel I'm too tired to write today:
"He woke up with a start — perhaps because of a noise outside his open window, or an unremembered nightmare. Sitting up, staring out into the darkness, he was suddenly angry. Angry at his grief counselor. Angry at the dog barking in in the distance…”
First lines of the novel I won't be writing today:
"He was a widower. A widower... That word — three empty syllables, three pennies tossed into a well — never attached to him, as a self-identifier. Widower, like a used band-aid. He struggled against it, like man versus crocodile. Widower.
Since the accident, he'd heard that word three times…”
First lines of the novel I won't be writing today:
"'I don't like telling stories,' the old man muttered. 'I have no use for them.'
He reached for his coffee, and his eyes fixed on a photograph hanging on a distant wall, taking on a ghost-town vacancy. After a moment, he mumbled this non-sequitur: 'They can't kill a memory. Only time can do that.'…”
