I admit it. When it comes to writing, I’m a pack rat.
I keep everything: blog posts that never saw the light of day, book reviews I write 13 years ago, ideas that I excitedly wrote down and then rejected later, emails I’ve sent to readers explaining something that might have been confusing, whole manuscripts, partial manuscripts, and fragments of stories that might (one day) become something more. I’ve kept scenes I’ve cut from my novels to shorten them or because they really added nothing to the story. I bookmark online articles that I want to read and refer to again.
I don’t do these things in hopes of leaving my literary estate to a university. I do them because I’m a writer. Ideas and inspiration come from everywhere and all the time. I save, I file, and I hope I remember.
Recently, I went through a file that I hadn’t looked at in more than three years. It concerns a manuscript that I worked on rather erratically from about 2007 to 2018, and then set aside.
To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.
Photograph by Wesley Tingey via Unsplash. Used with permission.
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