Contest: Kick Off National Novel Writing Month on Berkeley Patch

It's time to write a novel — and you've got a month to do it.

November is National Novel Writing Month, a literary project designed to inspire would-be authors to finally get around to writing that one, great (or, perhaps, not so great) novel. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59 p.m. Nov. 30. Sign up on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) website to plan your work of literary art, track your progress and receive online support. Alternatively, just sit down, pen in hand, for 30 minutes to an hour per day and see what happens. 

But novel writing can be a lonely business. To kick off the process, Berkeley Patch wants to write a novella (or perhaps a short story) WITH YOU. We'll start with a 200-word beginning and ask readers to continue the story. Every day in November we'll post our combined progress, until we have a middle and — eventually — an end. The only rule is that the story must be set in Berkeley.

To start at the beginning — we need a beginning. So submit a 200-word literary launchpad (set in Berkeley), and let's get going! Email your submission to berkeley@patch.com or post it in the comments below.

Here are some of the most celebrated first-liners in history (according to the American Book Review) to get you inspired:

Call me Ishmael. — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

A screaming comes across the sky. — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow(1973)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. — Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. — James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. — George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)