In praise of not thinking things through properly

Like so many other ideas, the concept for the Improbable Book Cafe came as a result of the Covid lockdown. In the hours I spent alone, I rediscovered the pleasure of listening to stories. I was busy, so short stories, broken down into five-minute episodes during coffee breaks suited me best. I wanted them to be funny or romantic because I desperately needed something to cheer me up.

Setting up the site has been a steep learning curve – and this is just the beginning. The plan is that the cafe will evolve. The first stories on the bookshelves are my own, largely because I am cheap, and I find myself a pleasure to work with. They are also light, optimistic stories. I feel the world has enough misery to cope with at the moment.

However, the cafe is a big place. It can host poetry and literary fiction, as well as ghost stories, detective series, or even radio plays. I hope that in future visitors will be able to find stories to suit different moods and tastes – and that other writers will contribute to an ever-growing library.

There’s lots I don’t know yet. How best to use this blog, for instance? Whether to stick to short episodes or offer longer recordings too? Is it a good idea to always provide an Ebook or a podcast option? Can I get actors to record some of the work?

But there are advantages to just launching into something, without necessarily thinking it through – which is where the scribble comes in.

My father was an artist, and whenever we children got stuck with our drawings he would find the largest sheet of paper in the house, hand us a 2B pencil, and say: ‘don’t think, just scribble!’

Later, when our arms were tired, he would tell us to look at the scribble and pick out the picture we had made. We would highlight some lines, rub out others, and sometimes paint inside the shapes – and eventually, a picture would emerge.

This website is my scribble. I’ve taken as big a sheet as I can and made as broad strokes as my arms will let me. It is a work in progress, and I hope that with time – and feedback from readers – a fantastic picture will emerge.