"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...(again)"

“Get back here. What are you doing? You think she isn’t going to notice? Words just disappear off the page and she, what…thinks it’s just a computer glitch and types them in again? Then where will you be? There will be no room for you. You’ll just be stuck out there by yourself with no meaning in sight. We are nothing by ourselves, no connection, no complete thought, no self awareness without connection to other words. You can’t exist out there…”

“I’ll be back. She won’t work on this for awhile.” And with that, Night left the page and the book where he was born and ventured out into the world. He had always felt something wasn’t quite right, something was missing, and he had to find it, felt compelled to find it, would not stop until he did and then he saw the Author up ahead, hard at work, single minded. Night snuck up behind him and watched as the Author gave birth to so many children, so many words. So many that it was astounding when suddenly the Author stopped, stopped cold turkey. Staring down at the page, thinking, imagining, the Author looked truly blocked. Night snuck close enough to see what the Author was stuck on. The line read (blank) and Day.

Night felt like he had been belted by some cosmic boxing glove when he laid eyes on Day. As Day looked around and her eyes landed on Night, anything or anyone between the two would be crushed by the hot lava that would sear these two together forever as Night leapt to the page, to the exact line and exact word placement to complete the phrase, Night and Day, searing its composer, Cole Porter, into hearts around the world, and creating havoc for Night’s own book; because every word leads to the next, has no meaning by itself, only in connection to other words and with Night gone, there was no “next”, so the story that use to start, “It was a Dark and Stormy Night” …has become the ultimate block. Many have tried. Many, many…but all have failed to write a story that can follow that magnificent entrance. “A Wrinkle in Time” has been the most successful. Shakespeare used the phrase in The Comedy of Errors: “Time comes stealing on by night and day.”

Night took “next” with him because every word leads to the next and next for him had not yet formed while he was still home, in his own book. It didn’t form until he laid eyes on Day and together, they created music for love. Night felt bad about abandoning his book. It will never be finished. What Night didn’t know is the beginning words of his book were created by the Author himself and the author wasn’t blocked. He intentionally did not finish —“It was A Dark and Stormy Night”. He was saying, “All you writers, come find me, reach for me, create a story that can stand in its own glory so when it looks at me, it sees itself and won’t die “in the light of common day”.