“Fifty-six times,” he muttered as he sat at his dinng room table, iPod in hand. “Fifty-six times I’ve sat here and tried to think of the opening line.” He stared at the floor as his mind whirled. Words tumbled and spun in a typhoon of sorts, each slapping against his mind’s eye in an effort to be used. He ignored those as they were nothing but memories of previous Ficly openings.

This is how he operated; this was his creative process. The first line would always dictate the Ficly (unless, of course, the Ficly was a true sequel). Like a well germinated seed, the first sentence would be the entire base for that story, the scene unfolding in his head as the words placed. Today, though, the words came slowly.

“Maybe I’m forcing it,” he said aloud to the empty kitchen.

“What,” hollered his wife from the bedroom.

“Nothing,” he said back. And then the seed fell out of his mind.

He didn’t have to force a story. This was a story, this moment. After all, he mused as he typed out the last line, life is a story.