Eric Mayer blogged today about his feelings toward "grabby" opening lines. I share these feelings, but part of me also said Well...

I often ask my boys in a happy voice Who wants to go bye-bye? so they'll come running and I can change two diapers, wrestle them into two pairs of little pants, find four socks, tie four sneakers, wrangle four moving arms into two little jackets, buckle two bottoms into stroller straps...

And then leave them sitting in the stroller while I get my shoes on, find my jacket, refill the Cheerios thing, see if the client has emailed, move the junk out of the entryway so we can get through--and finally make it into the hallway twenty minutes after I made the promise.

I don't care that a book has a zing-bang opener, but I do want to feel that we're leaving now, the stroller is in motion right now, not that I'm just sitting here while Daddy gets ready.

I've been on an Edgar awards committee. It's hard, when faced with a hundred novels on the last day of the submission deadline, to give them all a fair shake. You start thinking things like This is an award for the best novel of the year. Shouldn't that include best opening chapter of the year? Is it enough that after an uninteresting start, and maybe a perfectly fine middle, there's a great twist three hundred pages later? I still have six dozen of these to get through...

The novel-in-progress I put down a year ago to concentrate on the film has a bangup first line, but it's kind of accidental. I started in medias res, so... that's just the line it starts with. Backstory doesn't happen until almost a hundred pages later.

Do I like that I have a bangup first line? Sure! It's kinda cool. I like it. It kicks the action off neatly, and this main character (I hate "protag") is an instinctive doer, not a deep thinker.

It also plays into how people buy books. The usual order is: Look at the cover, pick it up and read the back, then flip to either the flap copy or the first line. Then either put it back or buy it. (Or, if you're me, carry it around the bookstore for half an hour while you gather six other books, and then put them all back and leave without buying anything.)

Is it necessary for a great novel? No, of course not. Some of the best things in life start slow and build.

But I have to admit... with as little time as I have anymore for reading, it's hard to get past a deliberate starting pace.

So my beliefs are in conflict with my behavior. I believe great novels can start slow. I also probably won't read them.