How to Write the Best First Sentence in the History of the Universe
Last week my son took his first proper steps. When he fell flat on his arse, this is what popped into my head:
At what age do we lose the courage to let ourselves just fall flat on our arses?
That same week I handed in the synopsis for my second novel, the sequel to I Am Traitor, to my publisher. The only thing left was transferring the vision that was my novel to the page. Easy, right? Now if only I could get past the first sentence. I sat at my desk, my leg shaking from too much coffee, staring at a blank page and blinking cursor. Obviously the first sentence needed to be just right; it needed to be 100 per cent — 110 per cent if this were the X-Factor; it needed to be perfect, beautiful, amazing, jaw dropping, mind-blowing; it needed to be a sentence worthy of the Nobel Prize for first sentences; it needed to be a first sentence that made all other first sentences on Earth — and in every other part of the universe where writing existed — redundant.
At the end of the week I was a nervous wreck, resentful at my chosen profession and amazed at my self-delusion: how had I ever been so foolish to think that I could actually do this job?
But then I came across an article on Medium.com called Being a Perfectionist Is Killing Your Creativity by Ryan Burney. It was the kick up the backside I so desperately needed. Not only does your obsession with perfection kill your creativity — it sucks the joy out of writing.
A few months ago my mother in law gave me this book:
In it I came across the best writing advice I’ve ever received. Ann is probably best known for her novels Bel Canto and Commonwealth but her memoir This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is an absolute gem.
Ann’s happiest time in the writing process is the time she spends making up the novel in her head.
“The book is my invisible friend, omnipresent, evolving, thrilling,”
she writes.
“This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its colour, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.”
But then comes trouble.
“I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing — all the colour, the light and movement — is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.”
And how do you deal with this loss?
“I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it.”
So how to write the best first sentence in the history of the universe: Forgive yourself. Or as my son’s new trainers would put it: Just do it.
Sif Sigmarsdóttir is an Icelandic columnist and author based in London. Her book, I am Traitor, will be published by Hodder in September 2017. You can pre-order it on Amazon . Sif is represented by Sophie Hicks Agency .
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How to Write the Best First Sentence in the History of the Universe was originally published in Sif’s journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
