Missed Connection: The Brilliant Story Idea That Vanished in The Night

Dear alluring stranger,

I was atop my memory foam mattress — wiggling and wobbling, stressing and worrying, breathing in cat hair and breathing out ravioli breath. Ah, I was exquisite! Just like Sleeping Beauty, if only she were too neurotic to sleep and too hair-sweaty to have beauty.

You were a half-formed story idea, original in topic and enchanting in tone. You swept into my consciousness without warning, luring my mind away from its usual nighttime fears of personal failure and World War III. You seduced me with a witty opening, an unexpected closing, and keen insight into the human psyche. There may have also been a Monica Lewinsky joke. But a kind one, the world’s first.

Oh, how I wish I had written you down, my dear strange idea in the night! I told myself that I’d remember you come morning. That you were too topical, too captivating, too intoxicatingly fabulous to escape my brain through the trap door of sleep.

I’m so sorry I let you become The One That Got Away.

Please, if you care for me but at all — if you trust that I can execute your contents half-perfectly, give you an at-least-mediocre voice, and earn you a non-zero number of readers — then find me again. I may be reached any day, morning, afternoon, or night, whenever is most convenient for you. (I promise to write you down this time, even if it’s by blinking in Morse code to my cat at 3:39am.)

Please, we could win a Nobel Prize together! I could sell 100 million copies of you worldwide! You could become a trending topic on Twitter! You could be read by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and/or his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and I could be booked by them, decades in advance, to one day read a snippet of you at Prince George’s wedding.

Don’t you want to be read at Prince George’s wedding, dear story idea? Why would you deprive yourself of that?!?

Anyway, if you could re-enter my brain or something, that would be cool, I guess. Whatever.

Yours truly and waiting,

the woman in the mismatched pajamas and discount grapefruit-scented nighttime anti-aging facial cream