With thanks to Steph T:

1. Take first five novels from your bookshelf.
2. Book 1 — first sentence
3. Book 2 — last sentence on page 50
4. Book 3 — second sentence on page 100
5. Book 4 — next to the last sentence on page 150
6. Book 5 — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.
8. Feel free to “cheat” to make it a better paragraph.
9. Name your sources
10. Post to your blog.

Okay, first, my shelf is upstairs and way too far to walk to (I’m feeling a little lazy right now), but I do have a plethora of books stuffed in the black hole (the cabinet under the TV), so I grabbed five from there.

Here goes, without the cheating:

“Baby,” groaned the guy--Ted? Tad?--something like that--and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall. I threw the lock and then the change had me. Twice. I’d have to invest in martial arts coaching and learn some police techniques for subduing felons. “I knew even then that I was waiting for the man of my dreams.”

Sources:

1. "In Her Shoes" by Jennifer Wiener
2. "Hunter's Moon" by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp
3. "Loving Mercy" by Teresa Bodwell
4. "One for the Money" by Janet Evanovich
5. "Falling Awake" by Jayne Ann Krentz

And now for the blog version, also from Steph:

1. Select five blog links from your links sidebar
2. Blog 1 - first sentence of the latest blog entry
3. Blog 2 - second to last sentence of the earliest blog entry on the front page
4. Blog 3 - last sentence of the first blog entry of the entire blog
5. Blog 4 - third sentence of the third blog entry on the front page
Then, click on the last link of the Blog Links sidebar at Blog 4. If there isn’t one, do this with Blog 3
5. Blog 5 - last sentence of the latest blog entry
6. Put all together to create a paragraph out of all that
7. Post it to your blog along with links to all blogs that you used here.

And we're off!

I surprised myself this weekend by actually meeting my BIAW goal. Isn’t it funny how we stress over a few tiny sentences? And like a phoenix, I was reborn through fire... It disciplines you to write on the fly, like a journalist. May it lead you to lucrative book contracts!

Sources:

1. Teresa's Journey
2. Cynthia Justlin
3. Silma's Misadventures of an Unpublished Writer
4. Sylvia Day
5. Diana Peterfreund

Now that that's done, I'm off to run errands.