The Trust Conundrum

Ch 1 cont'd: In which we encounter a fundamental paradox

Trust, Anna Smith

In the beginning, it is always dark.

This line from the film The Neverending Story, based on the book of the same name by Michael Ende, has always struck me as the perfect encapsulation of the early stages of writing.

We have an idea that lights the way, but like a single candle on an ocean or even a lake, the idea doesn’t show us the entire terrain. There is no way to rely on a single idea to bring us from start to The End. For that, we have to rely on something far more tenuous and seemingly unreliable: our own abilities.