One month ago, I said, “I want to write a story about a witch.”

 

From then on, I sat at my computer and squelch-squerched through the internet mire to glean a little about these terrible ladies of legend and folklore. I found an excess of images of either seductress or crone (mainly seductress – no surprise there), along with pages of charms and herbal remedies, broomsticks and familiars; but I found no story.

 

 

I talked to a practising Wiccan with whom I work. I read about black magic and white magic and sort-of-grey magic and fluff bunnies, but still had a cursor flashing the seconds away on a blank .doc.

 

 

 

 

Many times, I bemoaned to my wife: “Witches are a pain in the arse.”

 

I even set it aside and wrote another piece. When I returned to it, guess what? Yes, there it was! The cursor still waiting for my input.

 

Then the pigeon came.

It had come to me before – not the same one, because we are talking many years ago. I was in College and the bird was sitting in the tree outside my classroom window during a test. It did the same thing a week ago as it did back then, and with that in my head, I started typing.

The story is now finished. Maddie, a witch, has been conjured in a fiction dark. And a lesson has been relearned: Just write, because the act of writing will tempt the story onto the page and save your partner weeks of listening to your laments.