Car Parks & Shooting Stars
I’m a little bit obsessed with space. Anyone who knows me knows that. It just amazes me. I watch space documentaries on the daily and the more I learn, the more I feel incredibly tiny. And the more I want to learn. I like feeling tiny. I love the feeling of knowing we are the tiniest magical blue dot in the middle of something vast and perhaps even never-ending. I seriously regret not paying more attention to this stuff when I was at school. If I’d have known that all things space would be one of my biggest passions as an adult, physics would have held my interest a fuck load more. And I’m talking neutrons and black holes and gravity and mass, not just stars and constellations and planets. I don’t understand it all, of course, but it’s fast becoming a big obsession. I want to understand it all. Impossible, I know, but there’s nothing wrong with a gal shootin’ for the stars.
I follow NASA on almost every social media account. Meteor showers have always fascinated me. In fact, space has always kinda fascinated me a little bit. I’ve watched every space documentary on Now TV, Netflix, and Sky too. I’ve seen almost every space movie, with the exception of Star Trek and Star Wars. That’s not the kind of space I’m about. I like ’em factual, not fiction. I’ve seen virtually every conspiracy documentary. Every UFO show. Listened to every alien-themed podcast. I’m running out of ‘universey’ things to watch and listen and obsess over.
Space seems to be a weird running trend throughout my dating life too. I went to the beach with the geeky boy one time to try and find a nebula, and he/that night really sparked my interest, despite not utilising that perfect opportunity first kiss moment on the beach.
And there was the time that Jock took me to the middle of a field to watch shooting stars and we ended up having sex in the back of his car.
And then there was the time that Bestie and I stood in the back garden in the very wee hours of the morning, watching for shooting stars together. That wasn’t romantic, of course, but it will still wonderful. Fascinating. Enough to make me want to stand in the back garden for two or three hours, a hot water bottle shoved in the front of my sweater, staring up at the skies until my neck grew sore.
I’ve never really ever talked about my love of space, but something has spurred this really urgent need to write a good book. It’s like a lightbulb has been turned on. I keep trying to write a really good one that everyone will want to read, that’s where I’ve been going wrong for all these years. I can’t do that. That’s actually an impossible goal. I cannot please everyone.
Say it again, girl; I cannot please everyone.
I’m going to try and write the book that *I* want to read. And I think I want to read something spacey. Not Star Wars spacey, but something else. I’m not sure yet. I’m still working on it and it’s probably not the best idea to tell you all about it. Not that I’m saying you’ll steal my ideas, but you might. That would make me very sad. It’s taken me 31 years to find a novel idea that I love for more than five minutes.
But there’s this little seed in my head now. Bear and I were watching some space documentary one night and we started talking what-if’s. What if this could happen? What if that were to occur? Could you imagine if … ? I started thinking. We have these super long chats about intricate made-up theories and stories, usually in the middle of the night, discussing conspiracies, space-facts, UFOs, black holes, dark matter, and other such related stuff. If my imagination could run so wild as to come up with all these possible (albeit far-fetched) theories and ideas with my fella, surely it could just as easily run wild with words on a page? Or on a Pages document? Well, I’m giving it a shot. I’ll guess we’ll see how it goes …
In the midst of our brainstorming and back-and-forthing of story ideas and character traits, I happened to come across a little blog post that had been shared on Facebook, about a little meteor shower. The Geminid meteor shower. It was perfect timing.
“How about we go outside and see if we can’t see a shooting star or two?”
“Well, technically, they’re not actually shooting stars … “
“Shut up and just be romantic.”
“Yes, Bear.”
And I did. I shut up and just rolled with the romance. All wrapped up, we went outside, walked a little down the road to the dark car park, and waited. He wrapped his arms around me from behind and we just stood there, staring at the sky until our necks were sore from all the looking-up. It was beautiful. Freezing cold, but beautiful. Minus two or three degrees, I could see my breath. It was worth it. It was so worth it. Fifteen minutes out there in the cold, ten or fifteen shooting stars later, and we were both happy. He said he’d seen a ‘shooting star’ before, but I don’t think he had. His reaction was very much like mine, the first time I saw one in the back garden with Bestie.
“Wow, did you see that? I saw one, I saw one!”
We could almost have been a couple of silly, giggling teenagers out in the car park at two in the morning.
Romantic. As. Fuck.
It worked. He had this plan. He did it to try and give me some inspiration to open up that document on my laptop again. The one titled ‘NOVEL’ because I almost feel like it would be bad luck to give it a name before I’ve even written the damn thing down. And it worked; I found that inspiration. That little ‘shooting star’ to ripple through my imagination and send story waves flying on to the page. In fact, I managed to come up with two almost-complete plot lines, both of which follow this kinda sci-fi/spacey theme I’m obsessed with right now. Two very different ideas I must add, but both brilliant. I think they’re brilliant. None of the novel ideas I’ve come up with so far have been brilliant (in my eyes), and trust me when I tell you that I’ve come up with more than a few. So this one feels … special.
I just feel inspired. I think that’s the right word. Words are coming. I don’t feel like the shittest writer in the world right now. I might actually be able to do this. Maybe. Perhaps. We’ll see.
I’m just shootin’ for the stars ☄✨
