EDITOR'S DESK by Cheryl McGuire

“Remember, then, that words are the only tools that you will be given. Learn to use them with originality and care. Value them for their strength and their infinite diversity. And also remember: somebody out there is listening.” William Zinsser – On Writing Well

“No one consciously chooses to become a mediocre writer.” Leonard Bishop – Dare to be a Great Writer

Keeping the spirit of these two writing gurus in mind, I thought I’d see how a handful of name-brand authors began their stories. Picking randomly from books on hand—without commenting on their standing in literature—I chose an assortment and opened to their first page, first sentence, first paragraph to see how these technicians throw out their welcome mats and yank us into their narratives …    

“Tense and white to the lips, Angie Lowe stood in the door of her cabin with a double-barreled shotgun in her hands.” Louis L’Amour – The Gift of Cochise

“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep

“I was brought up by an Airedale.” Christopher Plummer – In Spite of Myself

“Charles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had to either climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room, working a cigarette in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish. They couldn’t help themselves.” Laura Hillenbrand – Seabiscuit, An American Legend

“My mother, dead now to this world but still roaming free in my mind, wakes me some mornings before daybreak. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a quitter.’” Russell Baker – The Good Times

“When Speke came at last to water, he was two days beyond death.” Louis L’Amour – That Man From the Bitter Sands

“I was born on September 23, 1920, on a dining-room table in a rooming house at 57 Willoughy Avenue in Brooklyn. I’m told I was delivered by a Chinese doctor, who patted me on the bottom and said, “Okay, kid, you’ve been resting for nine months. Now get to work.” Mickey Rooney – Life is Too Short

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly nighty-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 “A smear of fresh blood has a metallic smell.” John D. MacDonald – A Deadly Shade of Gold

“Here they come

And I’m not ready:

How could I be?

I’m a new teacher and learning on the job.” Frank McCourt – Teacher Man

“I am lying here in my private sick bay on the east side of town between Second and Third avenues, watching starlings from the vantage point of bed. Three Democrats are in bed with me: Harry Truman (in a stale copy of the Times), Adlai Stevenson (in Harper’s), and Dean Acheson (in a book called A Democrat Looks at His Party). I take Democrats to bed with me for lack of a dachshund, although as a matter of fact on occasions like this I am almost certain to be visited by the ghost of Fred, my dash-hound everlasting, dead these many years.” E.B. White – Bedfellows

“This is a story about a mother who never talked to her children. This is a story about a wife who rarely talked to her husband, though they were married for fifty-three years. This is a story of a woman who desperately wanted happiness but could never summon the strength to reach for it. This is a story of a woman who had a family that loved her, but who struggled to love them in return. This is a story about a woman people admired but could never get close to. This is a story of a woman who harbored many secrets and lived in daily fear that those secrets would one day be revealed. This is the story of a woman who took those secrets to her grave. This is a story about America’s first female rocket scientist. This is the story of my mother.” George D. Morgan – Rocket Girl, The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s First Female Rocket Scientist