Several days ago at work (otherwise known as the best bookshop in the world) my boss, let’s call her Carrots gave me a stack of young adult manuscripts to read over. Seems that she had been asked to read through them and sort the gems from the dross.

At first I had a wee giggle at the content of the stories (two different manuscripts were written from a poodles perspective) and (not surprising given my "condition") I was struck by how bad the first line of every manuscript was. Well, okay, not bad but trying too hard. I started to get a feeling... a weird feeling... maybe there are more of us out there?

Suddenly my dodgy first lines didn't seem so bad. In fact the mere knowledge that these first lines were out there a seemed to quieten the thump, thump, thump beneath the floorboards.

Believe me, I'd love to tack some of these first lines onto the end of this blog but Carrots was standing guard over them like the Balrog over the Bridge of Khazad-dû.

She seemed to know what I was thinking (perhaps even planning in the manner of the Thomas Crown affair). The manuscripts glistened in the early morning light. Each first line seemed to call out to me from beyond the page.

But there she was, the red-haired Bastian of privacy, brandishing her flaming sword of copy write. Suffice it to say the manuscripts are safely where they should be and not being pillaged for the purposes of this blog.

However, if you have recently submitted a manuscript for a Young Adult Fiction competition please consider this blog a work of pure fiction.

Yeah. . . fiction (also, I'm thinking of starting a support group).