So writing is a thing that happens, sporadically, on and off as I manage to for a little while push back the nagging and persistent sense that I’m a fraud playing at a grown-up game that I’ll never be quite old enough or good enough to really take part in.

Damn the duality, anyway. I can’t have it both ways. I can’t read published fiction with a sense that I can write at least as well as the author, only to stare at a blank screen or lined page with the conviction that I don’t have anything worthwhile to say.

And there’s a story there, right now, simmering in the hindbrain, under the surface, not quite hibernating but rather patiently biding, not quite evolved enough to do more than make occasional ripples that I can see from shore. And I’m not quite confident enough to climb into my coracle and paddle out to see what’s out there. I prowl the perimeter instead, thread my way through tall weeds and mud right there at the edge, at the in-between, not quite safe land and not quite here-be-dragons water, and measure the shape of it without ever really getting a good look at what I’m measuring.

But it’s there, and sometime very soon I’m going to have to dive in and breathe in the water and hope I’ve got gills enough to make it.