We're moving, do I keep or toss?

While cleaning and culling through our shit stuff I am coming across old writing, lots and lots of old writing. I’m not reading much of it, if I did I’d never get anything done. I’m shifting the pile of file boxes from way back in the corner, when we moved here twelve years ago, closer to the attic door. One box was a little different.

Flipping open the lid my all too familiar cursive caught my eye.

I’m a keyboard kind of girl, long hand feels cumbersome and difficult to edit, so to see a bunch of legal pads filled with writing kind of surprised me. What the fuck heck is this, I thought.

I started to read.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

Did I really write this?

I do not remember writing one word.

My mother’s handwriting and mine are were almost identical and she wrote long hand. Maybe this was hers. Nope. It was mine, she spelled better. This was laden with misspellings. That’s why I keyboard my stories, the trapped fifth grade teacher in my computer tells me when I fuck up spell a word wrong.

Before I got totally lost in the world of new characters I decided to put the legal pad masterpiece back in the box and move on.

But wait.

There’s more.

Maybe it’s my long lost bestseller with a backstory of its own to rival any treasure hunt.

I read another page.

Maybe putting it back in the box is my way of fearing success.

I read another page.

Maybe.

But I do not recall the story or the effort.

I closed the lid and taped it shut.

Once we move, and once I sort through the boxes again, looking for something I cannot find, I’ll come across the legal pad masterpiece, brew a cup of tea, sit and read and realize the truth regarding my fiction and where it belongs.

Will I laugh or cry or will my cheeks pink with the self-embarrassment of stupidity. Will I edit or shred?

 

Will I even remember it exists?

Did you ever discover writing you forgot you wrote?

1 2 3 and sometimes 4

1. Who am I?

2. Where am I?
3. What do I do?
4. How do I persevere?

1. I have 2Ns on the tale end of my first name. Does that make me different or does it simply provide me with an extra letter when I need one?
2. I am pivoting among projects, dizzying myself, confusing my goal and lost in a sea of choices.
3. Pick one and focus.
4. Always a multi-reader, (two books at a time), I can't write like that.

This weekend we had some long-time friends over for dinner. The last time I saw them, (six months ago), I mentioned that someone in traditional publishing showed real interest in a project I thought was, "the one". They asked if I had finished, "that book".

When I told that I had set aside that project for something I had finished years earlier, real disappointment passed across their faces. One half of the couple had worked in traditional publishing for years, so she knew the importance of the bone thrown my way by the earlier "someone".
That I saw, (you stupid fuck), on there faces, and (what the fuck are doing), lift the corners of their mouths and (finish the fucker or you will hate yourself), seep from their gaze, surprised me.

What am I doing?
Why am I spinning?
Why am I writing this, right now, instead of working on "the one"?

What?
Why?
I am off to slough away the depression of unfinished dreams and re-inspire myself. I am again telling myself, I WILL FTF. I have a feeling that this time, resolve will stick, because the story is a good one and I have an extra letter if I need one.

Have a nice day.