“I want to write longer stories”, I said to the olive-skinned bespectacled man before me.

To my five-year-old mind, he was a timeless oracle. He sat surrounded by trinkets, paintings and mirrors towered high, with a skull staring down at me from an old bureau. He spoke exotic words as he smoked his pipe.

The hypnotist could grant me the wishes I most desired. To overcome phobias, to fall in love with unpalatable foods, to be free from nightmares. My sister elected to stop chewing her hair, while I asked for the gift of storytelling.

Having perfected the art of writing my own name, I was excited to unlock a world of epic tales, of fantastical worlds taking shape before my very eyes. I could craft one sentence, maybe two, but then… they would all go home for tea. The happy ending landed the very second we arrived at the land far, far away.

The hypnotist would help. With his herbs and potions and soothsaying, he would transform this pre-schooler into a Tolstoy.

The next day, after I awoke from my deep, deep sleep, I was scrunched next to my sisters in the backseat of the family Ford, three sheets of unlined paper on my lap.

“Write a story about going to visit grandma”, my mother, the muse, suggested.

My lines curved downwards, bumps in the road jolted my letters, but I remained resolute, determined to channel the new energies the hypnotist had set within me. One page, then two, then three – both sides! My magnum opus. I autographed it proudly, bound my oeuvre with a pink paperclip, and somewhere, somehow, I was sure, the hypnotist winked.