The idea behind "Stories I Apparently Wrote"

Writing is a funny thing. You start with an idea — zing! — usually while you’re getting out of the shower or making a tricky left turn across traffic. You manage to write it down on a scrap of paper that you probably lose. But the idea still sticks in your mind, and other bits start attaching themselves to it, accreting like flakes to a snowball. Characters. Setting. Dialog. Action. And, yes, the perfect title. Sweet.

The story nags at you, but you’re too busy to write it. It plays over and over in your mind, like a favorite movie scene on a loop. Subtle changes occur. His shirt. Her laugh. Sometimes you wonder where you might have read this story, then you realize: you’ve never read it, nobody has, because you haven’t written it yet.

So, finally, ten uninterrupted minutes appear in your life and you write down the story. Only it takes two hours, and when you finish, it doesn’t seem quite right. Something’s missing. But at least you wrote it down and it’s — yes, remembered — saved in a file somewhere.

The changes develop soon afterwards. Right, he tells her this and she replies that. It’s a melon, not a peach. And what if — yeah! You rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Successive approximations to that original zing of a thought. You find the scrap of paper and don’t recognize the idea at all. But at least you can toss the note.

Then what? You want people to read it. Because this is communication, not talking to yourself. You want to share this idea. You want someone else to be entertained, to be distracted from the nasty world, to feel that zing. “Hey, listen to this!”

But nobody wants to publish it. Nobody. No magazine. No book publisher. Nobody. “Go away, kid, you bother me.”

So, you give up on that. These days, you don’t need black words on white paper. You don’t have to sneak past the editors and the agents. You can bypass all that and go directly to the readers.

That’s the idea behind this blog. Stories I apparently wrote. Free. Trying to complete the circuit. Looking for readers, no experience necessary.

See what you think.