'Ho, Diomed, well met!

Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?' said a young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb."

So begins Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel, The Last Days Of Pompeii, which was published in 1834. The book was a great success, in some way compensating for the author's turbulent personal life, one element of which is reminiscent of the travails faced recently by Ian McEwan. At the Cheltenham book festival, McEwan was harangued from the audience by his first wife and her partner, who were swiftly escorted off the premises.

Bulwer-Lytton suffered similar embarrassment when his former wife accosted him for his infidelities and hypocrisy at a parliamentary hustings, some 20 years after they parted. She had previously written a libelous novel about their unhappy marriage yet, despite the scandal, Bulwer-Lytton enjoyed a high-flying political and social career.

All that, however, is incidental. More to the point is that despite such turgid opening lines he went on to become a bestseller, his writing funding his lavish habits. There is proof, if it were needed, that the start of a novel can be atrocious, and still not put readers off.

Writers not yet in the first ranks can find consolation in a selection of top 10 worst opening sentences, published recently by The American Scholar. On their hitlist are Philip Roth's The Breast ("It began oddly."), Doris Lessing's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, And Five ("Rumours are the begetters of gossip.") and John Updike's The Widows Of Eastwick ("Those of us acquainted with their sordid and scandalous story were not surprised to hear, by way of rumors from the various localities where the sorceresses had settled after fleeing our pleasant town of Eastwick, Rhode Island, that the husbands whom the three Godforsaken women had by their dark arts concocted for themselves did not prove durable.")

I must admit, none of these would stop me continuing. Compared with the banality, lack of ambition, or glaring artifice of those trying for the literary equivalent of a Glasgow kiss which cross my desk every week, these examples are positively alluring.

What this list does demonstrate, though, is the delicate act a writer must perform to capture a reader quickly, without resorting to gimmicks or distorting their natural voice. You could argue that none of the above is entirely successful; certainly all three writers are capable of better. Yet the biggest cliche of the aspiring novelist is a first page that has been sweated over for so long, each syllable subjected to the spotlight as if under interrogation, that the words cannot breath for their own cleverness and artistry. By page 10, all energy is usually spent, and the reader's interest with it.

I was struck by Elmore Leonard's comment that he believed his writing improved when he stopped thinking of it as "writing". Yet how few novelists attain the degree of detachment or lack of striving that speaks of absolute self-confidence and skill.

That said, the modern novelists just quoted, whose sentences are decried, remain unrivalled for self-assurance and acclaim. It seems to me that first sentences are not about perfection or pyrotechnics but about trust: between the reader and writer, obviously, but also the writer trusting himself and what he wants to convey.

Creative writing teachers should perhaps help to debunk the myth of the traffic-stopping opener, and allow fledglings to relax - not too much, but enough not to be frozen by the blank page, or the weight of brilliant work that has gone before. Who could compete, for instance with "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter." (Mark Twain, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn). Or "I get the willies when I see closed doors." (Joseph Heller, Something Happened). Problem is, such sentences would make me to put my own work aside and read on. Just as the author hoped.