tooth soup

photo credit: Shooz

Inspired by ArtsJournal’s

blog post about Nabokov’s first sentence portraiture (reached via @Meanjin), I decided to engage in a little exercise. You’re all welcome to participate, and the rules are simple. Take however-many-you-like pieces of writing that you have lying around, and post their first sentences. Don’t just include the ones you think are good, give us a broad sampling. This is a learning exercise after all.

Here’s mine (culled from a selection of pieces that aren’t currently being sent around the place)

1. “The firm is interested in hiring an enthusiastic graduate architect to work on the design and implementation of projects addressing residential, commercial, and industrial needs.”
2. My girlfriend Lisa and I had just broken up.
3. If everything went according to David’s plan, March the 5th would be the day he walked down the street from his house with nothing at all.
4. It was a moonless night, and the shadows swarmed around Cian’s boots as she ran through the forest.
5. George’s fingers skirt the rim of the lubricant jar before reaching down to coat the rubber methodically.
6. It was approximately half-past eleven on a Saturday evening and Brendan was thinking about his cat.
7. We began our search for the particles at a public bar, scanning the length of the room and recording the apparent personalities of each visitor.

I think you’ll agree that there are very few entries in that list that achieve a portrait such as Nabokov did. We are constantly being told that the first line of any story must be a hook to catch the reader’s eye (and here I’m reminded of Margaret Atwood’s lovely poem), but perhaps only three of the above are hooks, introducing an idea that isn’t qualified within the same sentence (for the record, I’m thinking of 3, 5, and 6). Taken out of context, there isn’t much to the rest of them, appearing as mere statements of a fact. I can see the reader in my mind’s eye, arching a perfect eyebrow and asking me very pointedly, “So?”.

Well, so, I’ve got to think a little harder about my first sentences. How about you? Leave a comment or if you indulge in a similar post, link me through. I’d love to see what people might learn from this exercise.

photo credit: Olivander

Elena over at

With Extra Pulp (one of double-plus favourite writing blogs) is hosting an awesome contest at the moment, with prizes galore. All you have to do is answer her question of which you would rather be:

Would you rather be

a) A half-titanium cyborg with intimacy issues?

b) a grizzly-faced poet whose words land him in court?

c) caught in a messy love triangle with your mate, a beautiful woman, and your Sicilian temper?

And then tell us why.

That’s it! And if you do that, you are entered into the running for a veritable smorgasbord of awesome prizes. There are opportunities to increase your entries (by, say, writing a blog about it) but you can read all that at her entry.

Get to it, folks!

photo credit: principia aesthetica

Soundzine is a

literary e-zine that features poetry and prose from around the world accompanied by spoken recordings of each piece by the author or a voice actor, and artwork specifically chosen by an artistic director to complement the imagery present in the piece.

Soundzine is now up to its tenth  issue, and we’re again looking for submissions to join our ever-growing archive of excellent spoken word. To celebrate our milestone we moved into new digs at http://www.soundzine.net where our ‘Green’ themed tenth issue can now be perused, consumed, or ambled through at your leisure. I think you’ll agree that the quality of poetry and prose that can be found throughout all of the issues is of a high standard, and the added bonus of actually hearing the words spoken aloud is one that is rare in e-journals.

Soundzine is now looking for submissions to its eleventh issue, with the theme of ‘Sapphic’. Anything related to Sapphic goes. By Lesbians. About Lesbians. About Sappho. In Sapphics. Be Sapphic.

In my role as prose editor at Soundzine, I’m looking for any short stories or flash fiction you wish to send in. We have an 800 word maximum (mainly to keep reading times, and therefore file sizes, manageable) and we follow the Voiceworks school of thought with respect to the theme, i.e.:

• Themed work = good
• Good work = better
• Good, themed work = BEST

So if you don’t feel like you can write to our theme, don’t worry! Send in your best work and we’ll see what we can do about getting you into our next issue.

Prose submissions can be sent to prose [at] soundzine [dot] net, while everything else (poetry, articles, pitches) can be sent to submissions [at] soundzine [dot] org and we have a pretty quick turnaround on everything. The due date for issue 11 is June 15th.

Please, tell your friends, retweet this, and get the word around. I’ll be posting further calls as we get closer to the deadline. If you have any further questions regarding submissions, feel free to contact me on twitter @toothsoup. Now g’arn, get writing. (: