[Article] a crack in the wall

[I'm reading *Moby-Dick* at the moment](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/xavierroy_srividya-suryanarayanan-asked-if-we-can-do-share-7490785589437349888-Pdwq/), and I've been thinking about first lines. That's probably inevitable when you're reading a book that begins with ***Call me Ishmael***. It is such a strange thing to do with the beginning of a novel. Melville doesn't explain where we are or why Ishmael is speaking to us. He doesn't even tell us much about Ishmael. He simply gives us a name and a voice, and somehow that is enough to make us keep reading. Meanwhile, I've been trying to write a story of my own and have been stuck on its first line for a while. I wrote: > I was on my regular maintenance walk along the northern wall when I first noticed the crack. I thought to myself, *Well, it wasn't there yesterday*. I've been staring at that sentence long enough to feel a discomfort knowing that something about it wasn't quite right without being able to say exactly what. Then I…