The Hook

Boobs.

See how I grabbed your attention like that? The first sentence of a story or essay or anything else is pivotal, as important as the title or voice or subject matter. It is one of the first things I figure out before I allow myself to start writing something, and sometimes it’s just as far as I get. Some stories just can’t live up to their opening lines.

I’ve decided to post some of my favorite first sentences from abandoned blogs, complete with notes and commentary, just like all those DVD special features I never actually watch.

Karaoke has taught me that just about everything is done better by gay men.
This was intended to be the start of something like those annoying “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” posters. I would be looking far too deeply into trivial things to find some bigger meaning. A big problem with this idea is that I don’t have any interests or hobbies that could provide more than one or two “life lessons.” I considered creating a hodgepodge of thoughts from various topics, but that felt like cheating. Also, these sorts of essays are really annoying.

I like vodka.
I was going to use this statement to springboard into a comparison between getting drunk on beer and drunk on hard alcohol. Even for a blog, this would’ve been remarkably self-absorbed and pointless. I’ve decided to save these musings for a future piece of fiction where I can attribute them to a protagonist who is much more interesting than me.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other about the band Vampire Weekend.
It’s true. They are completely forgettable. I was going to craft a statement of identity from a list of my likes and dislikes, but I quickly realized how little passion I have. Almost every sentence turned out as apathetic as the first, such as “Most of the time I think Michael Chabon’s novels are okay” or “These shoes are fine, I guess”. Another fundamental problem is that none of these observations actually say that much about me as a person.

I like these sentences, and I certainly don’t blame them for the failures they led to. In the end, these essays were just very, very boring for me to write. I don’t write a blog to become bored. I write a blog to bore everyone else.