I couldn’t sleep. The outline of a story kept rolling around in my mind. This is unusual; ideas, yes…. those are incessant. Phrases that contain a story or a concept …but an actual, fictional story, start, middle and finish… that’s not how it happens as a rule.

I’m going to have to write it, of course, though I’m not sure I want to. It could end up a sad little tale or a warm and fuzzy one; even I’m not sure how that side of it goes. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see.

It is a little odd. Stories like that seem to have a character all their own…. Not in a literary sense, but almost as if they are living entities. Like people about whom you may know the details… as if you have read their personal files… but those details do not tell you how a person with ‘feel’ when you meet them. Nor do stories. Some of the most harrowing may have a denouement that uplifts and inspires; those which appear to be beautiful may be insipid… or make you cry. You just can’t tell until you get to the end.

It is that old saying about not judging a book by its cover. In terms of a writer’s marketing the cover may be hugely important… the one thing that catches the reader’s eye and makes them pick it up off the shelf. But the flashiest cover cannot disguise a poor story, nor truly convey the wonder that may await between the pages… in exactly the same way that neither the prettiest nor most unattractive face can show what lies in the heart. Not for nothing do we talk of being able to read people. You have to get to know them first… both books and the folks we meet… before you can really know what lies within.

You may get a sense of it… the blurb on the dust jacket, or the smile in the eyes may tell you that here is something worth exploring, but any exploration is, by its very nature, an adventure whose outcome is yet to be known. There will be twists and turns, surprises and shocks… moments of rare beauty or dark secrets lurking in the shadows. They can always surprise us; few tales are wholly good or bad and a life, too, is story we unravel as we go.

So I will write this little story and see where it leads. Given that the internet is running at the speed of a somnolent slug at present and keeping me largely offline while I wait for a new router to arrive, I might as well. It isn’t my usual thing, perhaps… it may be, I really don’t know yet until I write… so this too will be an adventure.