That dreaded first line
Hippos, crocs and drunken serenades at midnight
It was not the sort of place where you expected to hear a drunk singing beyond midnight. Or before midnight for that matter. But there he was in full voice as he wandered about somewhere under the trees. The sort of place I’m talking about is a larney resort not far from the Kruger National Park. As I sit here, I look out over water where hippos grunt and silent crocodiles slip into the reeds. Lording it over all is a Yellow-billed Kite in a tree across the river and a Fish Eagle patrols the waterway periodically. It’s idyllic.
After weeks of south-east gales in Cape Town which have been bad enough to draw complaints from the most hardened of my neighbours, this wind-free, humid place feels completely exotic. Until the drunken man serenaded the sleeping resort as he ambled around the parking lot.
This morning when I asked my friends if they’d heard him, they hadn’t. Which made me wonder: had I imagined it? Was it a figment from a dream? Was it a fiction? If it was a fiction, what did it have to do with the fiction disturbing my waking moments. I’m in the pre-writing period. It’s an awful time. Nothing much happens. You listlessly read books first read long ago – The Great Gatsby, Wide Sargasso Sea – and you make hundreds of useless notes. Many of them have to do with the first line.
Recently the Thriller Writers Association announced a first line competition and I idly thought of submitting. But then I wondered, how many of the first lines that have kick-started my novels have ended up being the published first line? Precious few.
In fact, maybe only one and that had to do with a baby-shit yellow Ford Grenada and a bunch of thugs in a 2010 novel called Of Cops & Robbers. So the idea of submitting to the competition was quickly set aside. You see, I have a first line but it has one critical element missing – the time that it takes place – and until that’s decided the rest can’t follow. Also, of course, that first line determines the style and the tone of the story. But getting there can take time. The way I look at it, there’s the first line that starts the writing process, and at some stage later comes the first line that starts the novel. At the moment, both lines are a long way from reality.
Which brings me back to the singing drunkard who merrily staggered his way under the trees in the dark of the morning. When I lived in Muizenberg drunken voices in the night were a part of the charm. To hear two voices going at one another in full “jou ma’s se poes” style at 3am was reassuring: all was right with the world. And so it was to hear the drunken serenader and the quiet voice that came to coax him back to his chalet. Order was restored. The quiet returned. I lay beneath the rotating ceiling fan and wondered if this would have anything to do with the first line I was hoping for. In all likelihood, probably not. So it goes. As someone once said.
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