“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

When I begin a new book, I know there will be an ending. One could say, we read a story to know how it ends. I can see the final page of a book, holding those last few precious words of a tale; or reference the small numbers displayed on my Kindle eReader indicating my progress through the book.

What I have yet to discover is how the book will make me feel as we journey together. I distinctly remember reading one series in particular when I was a preteen. Amidst the waves of emotion coursing through my adolescent soul, I sympathized with the main character growing up in rural Minnesota, even as I grew up in a rural community. The girl connected with the male character whom she spent time with throughout the story. He taught me the word “drawl;” and, like the silly schoolgirl I was (and still may be), I desperately wanted to see the two together. A simple, heart-fluttering kiss would have satisfied the seedling desires of my young heart. I wanted to know the ending, even as I dreaded its arrival.

Alas, we met – the end and I. It was disappoointingly incomplete, and I was never to know if anything happened between the two. I was tempted to write my own ending in order to satisfy my deep desire to know if my dreams for the characters would come true.

As time melded on and years passed, I began to realize it wasn’t the end that truly mattered after all – it was the journey. The journey was what had led to my caring so much about what happened to those characters from my childhood. We experienced many things and encountered many dangers together, and we came out stronger and bolder for them. We were all growing from children to teenagers; and living through the uncertainty, awkwardness, and discomfort that stage of life brings.

Much like starting a new book, I begin a new journey in my life: I aspire to be an author. It is not for but one reason – to leave hope to others long after I am gone. A legacy bringing joy; or at the very least, offering an escape from the daily grind of life.

I do not yet know what the journey will bring or how it will end. I do not know if it will make me laugh or cry, or perhaps both. I may lose hope or gain great happiness. It may end much like the series of my youth – in a desperate yearning for what the story would never grant me. Or it may end in the fulfillment of my dream. It is the reason we go on journeys, I suppose. Because we want to know the unknown, our untold story.

As I begin this journey, I hope you, fellow Untold Story, will meander down this path of discovery with me, perhaps even finding a desire within yourself to write. You have a tale to tell. Let us find out how together as we travel down this path, one among a thousand ways to begin the publishing process.

Musingly,

J. R. Brierley