The first inclination you may have as a writer of a crappy piece of work is to throw it away, despite the time and half-hearted effort you put into it. For me, this usually comes when I am struggling to sit down and just spend time writing. I make myself write and I come out with something truly awful that I want to throw away. However, after all that work, is it really necessary to throw it away?
I never throw anything away. I am a pack rat by nature. This includes everything I have ever written, probably since the time I was an aspiring poet at the age of eleven. That’s right, I have binders somewhere that have all my writing. Why do I keep it? Probably every piece I have written has at least some value to it. I can return to the emotion I felt when I wrote that piece and write it better than I did when I was eleven. Looking at the bad stories I’ve written lately, there is always some detail or bit of storyline that I know can turn into something good.
These pieces are essentially inspiration to pull the good and make the bad into something better. Read through your old work. Is there one line that is a keeper? That is the reason you keep the work. Sometimes that’s all you need to get started on a good piece. Even if you don’t have one redemptive line, you’ll have the experience to write about. How many people can relate to a story of someone failing miserably in the things she loves to do? How bad is this failure? How funny is this failure?
Don’t underestimate the importance of anything you do. As a writer, you should be looking to take away something from everything you do. Look for that one detail that can inspire a great story. Look for that one detail that people see everyday but don’t recognize its significance until it is pointed out to them. Hold on to that work, it may be redemptive after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment