Pirates and Mermaids

While I continue my search for an agent for my current story, I'm also struggling to find an entry point for my next story and, until yesterday, this was baffling me. Let me put it this way -- if I want to be a writer of stories -- fictions -- I have to have stories to tell, one after another. At this point I've told three stories in writing, all "unpublished," but, as noted, while waiting for the right agent to call, I've got to march onward and start story number four. That's where I've been stumped.

Yesterday evening, lying in bed, an idea struck me: an entry point. For me, an entry point is a theme that can begin a story. It's not necessarily the beginning of the story but it's an idea for a story. So, having found the entry point for as story which I may or may not pursue, I was excited, especially because this entry point would lead to a story that would be difficult -- very difficult -- to write, but the task would, for me, be exciting.

Then, while I was contemplating how I might write this difficult story, my dear wife chimes in -- "Oh, I have an idea for your next story: pirates and mermaids."

Now I have no interest in pirates and only a passing interest in mermaids but I know where this was coming from. We had just arrived at our summer house which is on a cove off the ocean. An hour's drive north is a seaport which boasts that it was once "the home of the privateers," privateers being nothing more than pirates licensed by a letter of marque from the government, in our local case the King of England. So pirates were on her mind and, where there are pirates, there are sure to be mermaids. Doesn't it follow?

But, logical as all this might be, I don't think I'll pursue "pirates and mermaids" as my next story. I really have no experience with either pirates or mermaids. But maybe, in a few years, in the distant future when I've finished the story I (might) want to work on now ... who knows?

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