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Another Beginning to Another Possible Novel
I have a lot of these — this one is pretty good
Still not me, this is also another person talking. Here’s a different attempt at an opening of a novel.
Poets were streaming through the woods. Some were in their twenties, some in their thirties, many were in their seventies and eighties. All of them, no matter their ages, moved with excruciating deliberation, as if they might be called upon to compose a sonnet about one step and a villanelle about the next and they wanted to ensure there was enough material. They came from the high road and the low road, some in pairs, a lot of them in stylish black, some of them such slobs it was impossible to say what they were wearing.
Elizabeth watched them from the bathroom window, contemplating taking the very first sedative of her adult life. She never took pills, she barely even drank, but it seemed that today, the day of her husband’s memorial service, with this army descending upon her — even if at a snails’ pace — she might want to make an exception. She put her hand on the bathroom cabinet door but then she couldn’t open it — only a fool would spend this many years working on a meditation practice and obliterate it with benzodiazepines.
This was the sixth time she had decided not to take one. She didn’t believe she…
