The other day I was searching for a blank piece of paper to jot some notes on, I had several phone calls to make and wanted lots of room to doodle on. Unable to locate any in the usual places, I started probing the back of my closet without much hope. Distractions of all sorts lay in wait for me there. The ballerina slippers I wore for my wedding, an envelope of random pictures that have yet to make it into an album, a box of jewellery I made years ago, and a spiral notebook.
After indulging in a brief side-trip down memory lane, I snatched up the notebook and flopped on my bed to see if it was full or not. It ended up being another jaunt into the past - it was my first notebook as a writer. Page one: poem – The Rules According to Mom and Dad – a fun poke at the crazy things your parents said to you growing up that you hated, that you now find yourself saying to your own children. Page two: short story – My Rapid Weight Loss Experiment – although this was a funny story, I found my shoulders hunching with embarrassment over the horrendous amount of SPAG (SPelling And Grammar) errors. Thank goodness I’m no longer writing long hand, and double blessings for the person who invented spell check!
Anyhow, at this point I figured I’d wasted enough time and curled the edge of my notebook back to let the pages flip until I could find the dreaded blank white page. Once located, I grabbed my phone and took care of business. It wasn’t until later on in the day I returned to the front of the notebook. Not really sure what prompted me to do so, perhaps a need to compare my original writing to what I do now. In any case, what I found there captured my imagination. A story, or rather the start of one. One I’d forgotten I’d even written. Fifteen-hundred words later, I was wondering why on Earth had I ever walked away from this very interesting beginning.
The characters, raw and unfinished as they are, call to me to tell their story. I can actually feel the potential for an entire book!
However, I must control the impulse - for now. I have a hot, historical romance on the burner and I must pay full attention to it before it slips away from me. I’m thinking this new one can simmer on the back burner until NANOWRIMO 2011. After all, it didn’t lose its appeal after all that time in the back of my closet ... or maybe ... nah ... I don’t know. Their voices are awfully loud.
So tell me, how many of you have fits and starts of stories tucked away in some forgotten file on your computer? Have lost notebooks hiding in your closets? Under your bed? Tossed into a junk drawer? If so, have you ever gone back to read them? Were you surprised by how much you really enjoyed or really disliked reading something you wrote? Do you revisit the worlds of your creation again?
Tell me your story.
Rain
Picture supplied by Dreamstime
2 comments:
Somewhere in the vast reaches of my attic are some spiral note books from my high school days with some short stories and poems. There are also some long forgotten typewritten pages, probably tucked away with the used electric typewriter I bought at a garage sale to type them with, of my first attempt at writing a romance. I have a vague recollection of what the story was about.
Now I'm feeling the need to go on safari into the darkest, deepest depths of my attic to find these relics and see how horrible (or maybe not so horrible) they are.
Thanks for helping to bring back those memories.
Margaret
You should definitely do it, Margaret! I actually went searching for more of my old spiral notebooks. I didn't find any other nuggets that called to me like the story I spoke about, but wow, what a kick to see how my writing evolved from one book to the next.
Take care, my friend,
Rain =D
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