you win this round, pearson...

Thanks to the persistence of one man (you may or may not know him by the name Juan Canadilla, but that's another story for another day), I'm posting again. It's one of two assignments I've completed for my online fiction class, but I'm too lazy to post both at the moment... not to mention tired. I've spent the better part of my post-9-to-5 day battling writer's block to beat a freelance PR project into submission... hopefully successfully, but there's no knowing that until tomorrow. And now I'm rambling (inarticulately at that), but I really just couldn't care less. So.

Yeah.

The assignment: Write 5 opening lines for the same story. The idea being that each should be a totally unique line, not just a variation or minor alteration of its predecessor.


The result:

• I see him standing there: wishing someone would walk in, call his bluff and, in so doing, force his hand.

• The day I left California was the beginning of the end. [alternatively :: Things started to go wrong the day I left California; even after I came back, they just kept getting worse.]

• My dad's favorite book was by Hemingway; I find this fitting — for several reasons, actually.

• As she watched me read the handwritten notes, the woman in the coroner's office started to tear up and I worried she and my sister might both start to cry — leaving mine the only dry eyes left in the room.

• You know, I'm really not sure which is worse: the mental anguish that I imagine must go hand-in-hand with the inability to comprehend a suicide, or the special brand of horror reserved for those of us who know both (a) exactly why they did it and (b) that, if we were in their shoes, we'd have done exactly the same thing.

The verdict: I dunno, you tell me?