3 December 2022
Canberra, Australia
The goat sat on top of the hill. Of the innumerable pieces of wisdom my dad has handed down to me over the years, that sentence is one I turn to most often. The concept is simple: when you must write something and have no idea where to begin, start with "The goat sat on top of the hill." It's a great first sentence. Subject, verb, noun. It's short, clear, and sets things in motion.
Of course, most people aren’t planning a treatise on goats, or hills they sit on top of, so the next step is to take a word or two from the sentence and replace them, to suit what you’re writing about. It doesn’t really make sense at first, but as you work through it, refining further each time, a first sentence slowly comes together.
I’m convinced that sentence has magical powers. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stared helplessly at the blinking mouse cursor at the top of an empty page. Somehow, adding those 8 short words starts something. The paralysing inertia of writing is pushed back, one syllable at a time.
***
My room is a mess. I haven’t started packing yet, and the bag I’ll be taking with me sits empty at the foot of my bed, smirking at me. 6 years' worth of life in Canberra and all the things collected with it lie piled on the floor, despite my best efforts to throw out or give away as much as I can. My cricket bat went to a lovely man promising it to his son for Christmas, and my Xbox to a young guy who frantically messaged me to organise picking it up, worried I'd have second thoughts about selling it so cheap.
Parting with my books has been hardest- I've allowed myself a quota of 3 medium-sized volumes to take with me. I've had to whittle my collection of 50 or so down to a long-list and then a shortlist, like my own personal Booker Prize. I don't really have a criteria, it's more of a feel. I figure it's better to take books I haven't read yet, and some diversity of genre and subject matter would be ideal, but beyond that I'm not ruling much out. I've got just over a week to select my final three. It's heartbreaking, I can't believe people do this for a living.
Comments