Lindsey wrote a great post about her short story collection, and posted all the first lines. It was so much fun to read that I thought I would do it too. So here are the first lines from all the stories I have right now (Oh, and if you’re the one-in-a-hundred who erroneously thinks the internet is public domain and you can just copy these for your own work – THINK AGAIN. You’ll find the answer is no).

Ten stories, 28,932 words, 54 pages.

• I pull Eric out of the path of a telephone pole that materializes in front of us.
• The day I nearly died, my brother saved me.
• I worked at the museum, but it wasn’t anything fancy.
• Norah is the most middle child, and in photos she was always sullen, looking away from the camera, or sitting on someone’s lap, or having someone sit on her lap.
• The fact that my name was a palindrome did not prevent me from being the most boring member of my family.
• 1) With a jerk, Mary realizes she’d been asleep.
• The crack in the window was plugged with a wad of paper towel, yellowed by time.
• To dream of snakes is an omen.
• We were in the middle of a Viking village when the volcano erupted in Iceland, nearly 1,600 kilometres away.
• My mother and I picked our way slowly down the ravine path.

In four stories, a character is either Finnish or Filipino.

Two of these stories share a character.

One story is about a writer who has a story about a blackout and about a couple who try to outdo each other with petty thefts – two stories I really have written.

That writer also has a third story about a man who suddenly realizes he can communicate with squirrels. I have not written this story.

Some characters are based on real people, but resemble these real people now only in the way a loaf of bread resembles a pinch of flour.

Two of these stories underwent three years of mind-numbing, ill-advised editing. One became a novel and went back again. What remains of them now is drastically different. I now am allergic to spending more than two weeks editing a story.

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It seems so wrong that I only have 10 stories. I say only, but it’s enough for a collection. Though it also feels so small. There’s something about having your handful of stories in the “system,” submitting them to literary magazines over and over again, that makes you feel you have more than you do.

Also, I’m trying to work out why Lindsey and I have the same number of stories, but mine use more words with fewer pages. Perhaps I use shorter words? [Note: It's the formatting! We figured it out.] Seeing all my first lines laid out like that, compared to Lindsey’s, it amazes me how short mine are. In fact, in almost every story, my second and third lines are much, much longer.

Go see Laura Jane and Teri‘s entries on this theme, too!