When I begin a story or a chapter, I hit my foot against the floor and intentionally crank an inelegant sentence into a rhythm that will define my momentum for the rest of the piece.  I tell myself that the asymmetry is employed as a method for disrupting the flow of my reader’s thoughts, to attune her brain to my own, and better invade the crannies that lurk behind conscious thought. 

It is as much for myself as it is for the reader (though I love those crannies and I would do anything to clutch every inch of another person’s brain and embrace the soul like some otherworldly octopus).  My own consciousness is so loud, always editing, and the disruption destroys the rhythm I live in, allowing the rhythm of the story to take hold and wander away from my self. 

Sometimes I rhyme (rhymes are unnatural because they demand more attention than other combinations of words) and sometimes I shout and sometimes the true first sentence is

STAMP ball change bahp bahp bahp HIT bahp bahp

!!!Broken Keyboard?!!!

begin