You’d be terrified if someone could read your mind. You’d be terrified if you read mine.
Not because of the secrets, though, let’s be honest, there are a few, but because of the sheer chaos of it.
Half-formed thoughts. Fragments. Scenes with no beginning. Dialogue with no context. It would look like nonsense. 
And yet … somewhere in that mess are entire novels. 

I’ve started to realise something after all these years of writing:
I don’t think the story appears as I write.
I think it’s already there.
I just unlock it, piece by piece.
I don’t plan. I’ve tried. I hated it. I don’t do it.

But here’s the thing, I also don’t get lost.
I get annoyed. I stare at the screen and question my life choices like every other writer on the planet. But I don’t lose the story. I don’t wander off into narrative wilderness wondering what happens next.  

And that tells me something important.
The story exists somewhere in my brain in its entirety. Not in a neat, labelled, colour-coded outline, but in a way that’s functional and fluid. Alive. Waiting.
I had proof of this years ago.
Somewhere around Psychobyte, or maybe even earlier, I saw the ending of the FBI-Byte series. Not vaguely. Not a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” idea.
A full scene.
Clear. Complete. Finale.
The problem? I had no idea where it belonged.
So I carried it. For years. Until I hit the point in Vaporbyte where it finally clicked into place. Like a key turning in a lock.
That scene didn’t come from nowhere. It was already there. I just wasn’t ready for it yet.
So where does it come from?
Probably not the ether. Much less romantic, I’m afraid.

I watch people. I’ve always watched people. I listen. I pay attention to patterns, how things unfold, how people react, what happens next when pressure is applied.
After a while, your brain gets very, very good at running simulations.
You start to anticipate outcomes. You see the next move before it happens.
Do that long enough, and congratulations, you’ve built a story engine in your own head.

Which brings me to something else.
People talk a lot about influence. About trends. About what we should be writing, reading, watching, thinking.
Do this.
Watch that.
Write to market.
Follow the trend.
Don’t follow that trend.
Be like this author. Not like that one.
It’s constant. Loud. Relentless.
But here’s the truth: all of that is external.

Your thoughts? Those are yours. They’re the last place that hasn’t been fully colonised by noise.
No one can actually make you think something. They can suggest, push, manipulate, shout, but at the end of the day, what happens in your head is still yours to control.
You can smile at someone while internally dismantling their entire argument.
You can nod politely while planning something completely different.
No one knows.
And for me, that matters.
Because if I’ve got multiple books sitting in my brain, fully formed in ways I don’t consciously understand yet, waiting for me to tap into them …
Then I don’t have the bandwidth to care about what “society” thinks I should be doing right now.
I’ve got work to unlock.
The story is already there.
I just have to trust myself enough to find it.