You Think You’re Writing About Something Else

The first time this happened, I didn’t know what to call it.

I wasn’t trying to write a book.
I wasn’t even trying to write my story.

It was December 2017.
I thought I was writing a Christmas post.

It started small.

A memory.
A room.
A door I didn’t want to open.

Sweets on top of a wardrobe.
A sister shouting through the other side of it.
Me pretending to be asleep so I didn’t have to face anyone.

That was all it was meant to be.

Just a moment.

So I wrote it.

Kept it simple.
Kept it where I could manage it.

A job.
A wage.
A routine that revolved around getting through the next shift and the next fix.

Nothing dressed up.

Just what it was.

Then something shifted.

Not all at once, but just enough to notice.

The writing didn’t stay in that room.

It moved.

Back to the Barras.
To a shop window.
To a Scalextric set I had wanted more than anything.

And somehow, sitting there typing it out, years later, I wasn’t just remembering it.

I was back in it.

I hadn’t set out to write about loss.
Or distance.
Or what addiction had taken.

But it was there.

Between the lines.

So I kept going.

From that Christmas…
to another one.

Different room.
Different door.
Same weight sitting underneath it all.

Only this time there was something else in the middle of it.

Someone walked into that space and said something I wasn’t expecting.

Not loud.
Not dramatic.

Just enough to change how I saw the whole thing.

By the time I finished, I hadn’t written what I thought I was writing.

It wasn’t just a Christmas post.

It was the beginning of something.

I didn’t know it at the time—but that piece would become the first step towards telling the whole story.

A book I hadn’t planned.
A story I hadn’t intended to write.

That’s the thing about writing like this.

Whether it’s a memory, a poem, or a piece of fiction—

you don’t always know what’s there when you start.

You just follow the thread.

And if you stay with it long enough, something has a way of surfacing.

Not always neatly.
Not always comfortably.

But honestly.

Looking back, that first post didn’t change anything overnight.

But it did something quieter.

It opened a door.

And once that door was open,
it never really closed again.

Part 2 looks at the lines we almost delete—
the ones that feel too close to leave in.

If this struck something familiar, you might find more of it here—
in the Between the Lines series, and across the wider Window Seat journey.