It has taken me a long time to accept this. When you start out as a writer, your ego assures you that ALL your stories will, at some point, turn into bestselling novels. You happily fill up an array of notebooks with stories, quietly confident, they will all feature somewhere in your future writing career.

I mean why would you doubt your ego?

It is only after writing seriously for several years, you come to realise that not all your stories have made it out of your notebook (cue strongly worded letter of complaint to your ego) and more importantly, some were not supposed to.

Stories come to us for a number of reasons and it is naive to think every single one will grow literary wings and fly away.

A lot of stories come to teach us things.

In my experience all stories come with little self destruct devices…