Friday, October 21, 2011

Creativity amid chaos

It's the end of the week. TGIF and all that. I wish it were TGI-six months from now. Because maybe all of the house-related problems we've been having lately will have been resolved by then. I certainly hope so.

In the midst of all this anguish, I was bouncing around through my flash drive and found the first 10 pages of something I wrote last year, maybe around this time, when I was floundering. I'd had an idea and it resonated just long enough for me to write those few pages and then I promptly abandoned it.

I have a lot of those files in my flash drive. The beginning of stories that never get told.

But in this case, the story might actually get a chance. I read those pages and said, "Hey, this isn't half bad." And I proceeded to write five more pages. And then five more. And now I've got 30 pages, which I showed to my agent to see if he thought it was worth moving forward. He did. He was incredibly encouraging.

Sometimes looking through the flash drive is a really good idea. I haven't written much since I turned my last manuscript in to my agent this past summer. I started another YA book, but haven't gotten too far with it. And then all those house things started to go wrong and distractions overruled creativity.

Maybe I should write about dishwashers breaking down, trees falling during hurricanes, showers that leak into basement ceilings, mice in the attic, and non-watertight porch windows.

Or maybe not.

Let's just say the book I'm working on now doesn't have any of those things.

Yet.

1 comment:

AnnaMartin said...

Encouraging to know a successful writer I admire does that too - start then abandon ideas, only to find then later and ponder their merit!

Thanks for sharing stories like this!