Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Ghosts in the Graveyard

This is topic Ghosts in the Graveyard in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

How many of you have a bunch of old stories that are finished or mostly finished but are now resting in dubious peace on your hard drive or in a folder? I've got about a dozen. Some are rough drafts that fizzled out after a round of critiquing and some are finished works that I even spun around at a few markets before laying to rest.

But I was thinking...what are they doing dead in the ground? Surely there was a gem of truth in those stories that encouraged e to spend my time on them in the first place. What is that gem? What is their truth? And if I reawaken the dead will I end up with Frankenstein's monster?

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Why not Frankenstein's monster?

Take several of them and combine them into one new story. That would give you a fresh new perspective on all of them. 'Tis my plan, anyway.

Hang on to them. They'll find purpose again, even if it's only inspiration for something new.

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

I keep my stories around for days when I have writer's blahs. I took one scene out of a story with irredeemable plot problems and turned it into the base for a short story that I rather like. I'll let you know if it sells, then it'll prove that my method is worth following.

Posted by Jeff Vehige (Member # 2284) on :

I think it all depends on the way you work. I've found that it's better for me to rely on my subconscious more than anything else. So if I start a story that goes nowhere, I put it aside and try to forget about it. If I can't forget about it--that is, if I find that it keeps coming back to me every few weeks while I'm driving around town or on a walk or while I'm cooking dinner--then I know that something important is there. At some point I move the idea from the back burner to the front and start really thinking about it. Rarely--rarely--will I pull out that old manuscript.

Basically, I've just expanded Stephen King's similie that writing a story is like digging up fossiles (in On Writing) to the whole writing life. Every time I sit down to write, I'm digging up something. It may end up being a few worthless pebbles and therefore should be throw away. Sometimes I uncover something important, but I don't know how to get it out . . . and so I just wait until I learn how to dig it up. And sometimes I end up digging over here, then over there, before realizing that I should have been digging somewhere else completely. So far, I've never just stumbled upon a site and been able to dig it up completely.

This used to bother me a lot. It doesn't any more because I've realized that stories need time to develop in the shadows of my mind before I can write. And I've learned that some of my favorite authors spent years just thinking about some of my favorite novels (letting them grow in the shadows) before spending another couple of years writing them. That's a bitter pill to swallow because of the urgency so many writers feel to get published . . . but swallow it we must.

[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 18, 2005).]