Ever have a piece of writing you knew was SO good, but unfortunately have no idea what you wrote it on? Napkin, envelope, scraps, bills . . .
I wrote this darling intro to a story I said I'd someday finish, put it away and forgot it.
Then I decided to finish it. But I forgot that I had wrote the opening, until today. It was the perfect opening, much better than what I've been struggling with for the past few days. So I go to find it. Can't. Look on the back of EVERYTHING I can find. All my notebooks. Unnamed files on my computer. Misnamed files. Any file I haven't opened in the past month, hoping it's there.
Then, in one of my notebooks, the one I had taken to Italy this summer, I find it. Except, it's torn in half! I have the first sentence. I remember I had drawn a map on the other side, of how to get to our hotel in Venice, and tore it out so I wouldn't have to carry a notebook around .
So now I'm searching through my bag of reciepts and brochures and fliers and all from Italy (thank goodness I never throw anything away) hoping that this time I had not been a good girl and thrown out what rightly looked like trash. It's not trash now! But there it is, I find it. And it is the perfect intro. I don't know what I would have done if I never found it. Probably go crazy.
Don't you just hate the panic, the chest pains, the knot in your stomach, when you're looking for that perfect piece of writing? Cuz you know, somehow, you could never write it the same again? Creativity is so fickle. This goes along with the writer's block argument. Do we have to cater to a muse, or is the perfect writing inside us, somewhere, waiting to come out if only we would let it?
Why did I want that intro so much if I could just write it again, and probably better too?
I wrote this darling intro to a story I said I'd someday finish, put it away and forgot it.
Then I decided to finish it. But I forgot that I had wrote the opening, until today. It was the perfect opening, much better than what I've been struggling with for the past few days. So I go to find it. Can't. Look on the back of EVERYTHING I can find. All my notebooks. Unnamed files on my computer. Misnamed files. Any file I haven't opened in the past month, hoping it's there.
Then, in one of my notebooks, the one I had taken to Italy this summer, I find it. Except, it's torn in half! I have the first sentence. I remember I had drawn a map on the other side, of how to get to our hotel in Venice, and tore it out so I wouldn't have to carry a notebook around .
So now I'm searching through my bag of reciepts and brochures and fliers and all from Italy (thank goodness I never throw anything away) hoping that this time I had not been a good girl and thrown out what rightly looked like trash. It's not trash now! But there it is, I find it. And it is the perfect intro. I don't know what I would have done if I never found it. Probably go crazy.
Don't you just hate the panic, the chest pains, the knot in your stomach, when you're looking for that perfect piece of writing? Cuz you know, somehow, you could never write it the same again? Creativity is so fickle. This goes along with the writer's block argument. Do we have to cater to a muse, or is the perfect writing inside us, somewhere, waiting to come out if only we would let it?
Why did I want that intro so much if I could just write it again, and probably better too?
I'll just work on some other projects until I can either replicate or recover that part of my notes. I learned my lesson after that. All my notes go on the computer, and will be printed once I actually get the printer working. (Lost the installion disc somewhere - it's half scanner so it won't work without the software it comes with.)
