My last email announcement asked folks to send me writing for a suggested start line.  Here is an intense response. 
Try this opening line yourself      "Stop me the next time I..."       and email me at info@WriteYourLifeStory.org     or www.AnneRandolph.com   

Mike McNern from Colorado Springs wrote  from  Subject: Re: Try Kitchen Table Writing opening lines

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Stop me the next time I ...
 
reach for the pen.  My arms are leaden and I struggle like an animal to move, and reach for a pen one last time. I try to think back, how did I get this way.
 
I sit in my tiny cage, the smell of rust and stale urine make my nose want to close up tightly against the onslaught. I reach for the pen hidden under the lid of of the smooth industrial toilet. Hidden from the prying fingers of the screws taunting me, trying to wrench the pen out of my hand, if I let them find it.
 
I remove the pen from it's secret place, hidden among all that remains of an unspeakable, wasted life. I feel compelled to write down a litany of my sins, real and imagined on the only paper afforded me. Rolled neatly, but too thin for writing, the toilet paper rips as I write upon it feverishly. My imagination spills out onto the paper. Are these my sins, or that leering pedofile down the hall. I write feverishly and tell the worst thoughts I have ever thought.
 
The screws have seen me. The paper tastes terrible. Maybe I can flush the paper. There is too much paper to swallow. If I could only get it into the toilet. I shoot, it falls short. I'm no Michael Jordan. The screws read my work. They laugh at me, as I lay beaten on the concrete floor. "It isn't real", I scream.
 
I sit before the judge. Everyone looks at me. My lawyer, that young pencil-neck right out of school is writing. I move like a cat and wrench the pen from his soft hands. I must write. The screws drag me out of court.
 
I lay on the cot. Waiting. I must write. I run my fingers around the inside of the toilet. No pen there anymore. I write with my soiled fingers on the wall, but I don't get very far. The screws return. "It's time", they say. I am roughly lead by the shoulders down the hall. A door opens and I am shoved like a rabid dog onto the rough hewn chair. They strap my arms to the chair, I can't move. The screws talk, but I can't hear them. I want to write. I writhe in the chair," I want a pen!" The screws yell at me, but I don't know what they're saying. Finally I hear "Any last words?". I scream "I want a pen!". Ten thousand volts short circuit  my muse. ZZZZZZZZZZZ.