First paragraphs
I've started many novels in my life but never finished one. In fact, I have never gotten beyond the first paragraph. The opening paragraph is so exciting to write. So full of promise. After that, though, I lose interest. I’ve got a short attention span and a small bladder. I sit down to write but very quickly I have to pee and the next thing I know I’m in the kitchen looking for something to eat. Then there’s this problem: novel writing is tedious. There’s all that research to do. Characterization. Plot development. In short, the damn thing isn’t going to write itself. Nah, you know what? Who needs it? It’s good to know your limitations. I’m a first paragraph kind of writer. There’s nothing wrong with specializing. The important thing is to write the best damn first paragraph you can. Never sell your vision short. Is there a market for first paragraph novels? Well, not yet, but there could be. Just as I am writing less, people are reading less. We already have the USA Today newspaper. How far off can first paragraph novels be? With that in mind, I want to be ready when the time comes. That’s why I’m starting a new category at this blog called “First paragraph novels.” * And here is the first entry. It’s the first paragraph of a historical/action-adventure/romance/science fiction novel I’m calling “Abe, We Hardly Knew Ya.” (Note: this work has an epigraph. Epigraphs don’t count as an opening paragraph. Do I have to explain everything?)
* Actually, it's "Novel beginnings."
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Play that funky music white boy
Play that funky music right
Play that funky music white boy
Lay down that boogie and play that funky music till you die…
(hey,hey) till you die…yeah, yeah
- Wild Cherry
Chapter one
On his seventeenth birthday, Abraham Lincoln stepped away from his comfortable but safe life with his father, stepmother and siblings in their cramped log cabin home in rural Illinois to seek out some booty at a nearby brothel. At this tender young age, Abe could not have known that he was destined for greatness. He certainly could never have guessed that he would one day be elected president of the United States of America. Had he known this, he probably would not have fallen head over heels for a young black hermaphroditic prostitute named SamSam. Still, pretty quickly he ciphered that this probably wasn’t a good thing. Word had leaked out. His parents were outraged. Lincoln’s father was quoted as saying, “For crying out loud, we’re simple country folk, why couldn’t he marry his cousin like everybody else around here?” So, after six weeks of rapture locked up in a back room of the Knob Creek Saloon with his beloved girl/boyfriend, Abraham Lincoln, the future sixteenth president of the United States, climbed out of a bathroom window and ran naked down the road heading due east. He never looked back.
9:55:52 AM 
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