The First Sentence

“How does one write what one knows, when one knows nothing about anything?” 

This was the question running through Nick’s head when he sat in front of his computer to write. 

All sense of being a writer left him at that very moment. He knew that he had a few unique experiences, but were they worthy of being written about? 

That was the question he was afraid to answer. He wanted to inspire, not titillate and that was a tough call to make. Would writing about his subhuman past inspire anybody? 

If he wrote it well it could, it totally depended on how he felt about it. To write from life was a big step, but it was the only way forward for him. That is all he knew. 

To write about life was all he really could do, and now he was waiting for the first sentence to come to him. 

Grammar and vocabulary should not stand in the way he thought. He felt like Snoopy for a bit, sitting at his typewriter, writing his best selling novel, as he placed one word in front of another. 

He was at a crossroads in his life. The past was intersecting with his future right now. He had to talk about the past to create space for his future. It was only in expressing and acknowledging it could he go beyond it. 

That was where he needed to be. 

Only one sentence is what he wanted, that would trigger an avalanche he felt. 

But where do you start was the question. 

His life was peppered with instances of indulgence, decadence, nobility, selfishness, selflessness, lust, frame ups, spirituality, peace and love, but it was tough for him to get that start. 

Maybe he would start randomly, instead of chronologically. Maybe he would remember more along the way. Maybe he would get to tell the truth about himself to himself; the gaps getting filled up as he went along. 

He had recalled much of his life during his years of paranoia and delusion. Much more than any man should have to see of his own past. 

But in that was his release, he could not deny that. 

The past is dead they say, but little do they tell you that it lives on in you till you have successfully accepted what it is trying to teach you. 

A moment is all it takes for life to happen. He sat there staring at the screen and put one letter after another till it said, “I was born to live and die many times during the course of my life, so that I could see for myself what it was that I was put here for.” 

That felt right and he smiled and stared at it for a long time. More would come now, of that he was sure. 

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