Time to Recycle

I just wrapped up a rhyming picture book manuscript, but I’m still itching to write some more. So I started off by opening some files that contain works in progress and I took a look at what I had come up with so far, no luck there. But in doing that, I did realize something. When it comes to story ideas and works in progress, I’m an electronic pack rat. I don’t toss anything away. What’s funny to me is that I never thought of myself as a pack rat before. But when it comes to my writing, I am.

Thank goodness that I keep everything electronically, because otherwise I’d have stacks of paper from the floor to the ceiling. I even have two or three work-in-progress versions of the same story. Sometimes a previous idea might be the best one. I just hate to throw ideas away. I always feel that I’ll have a use for them someday. Believe me, it’s not because I think all of my ideas are golden, they’re not. I think that it’s because if an idea doesn’t work here that doesn’t mean it won’t work in another story.

So I keep them around, hoping to recycle them one day when I’m stuck on another story or when I think I can fix whatever doesn’t work with them. Most likely though, they’ll just stay unworkable ideas in unworkable stories. But who knows, I’m an optimist at heart. Otherwise, I would have quit long before I ever had any success at this.

Now what else do I have here? …