I don’t write to be famous, I don’t write to be known, I write because I am and I want to be read. How sad to fill a room with paintings no one sees or play music no one hears. Writing is talking without sound, singing without score and dancing without movement and yet, it is all of them. It is a solitary art conjured from thought and expressed by the need to communicate.

HEAD SLAPS, SPEED BUMPS and LIGHTBULBS, one woman's WTF, oops and ah-ha moments of life.

They were published once, and as every writer knows, once is not enough.




Monday, May 30, 2016

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?

6 comments:

  1. I have, and it is the most surreal feeling to read words, and not remember them, not know you must have written them. And to realise this writing gig really is part of you, that you've been doing it longer than you remember.

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    1. It's innerving for sure.

      Like when someone says you gave them life changing advice and you can barely recall their face and can't remember their name. That happened recently. I chalk it up to the many young women who have worked for me over the years and actually listened to what I said. Thank God I gave good advice.
      Maybe forgetting makes room for us to create later.

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  2. Funny you should ask. It wasn't a discovery...my writing is still too fresh I suppose, to have any history. It was with my second book (the one that didn't go on sub)that I recently flipped through, and strangely, I barely remember writing the parts I read. It was written about 4 yrs ago, but it's been that long since I bothered to look at it. I'm glad you're keeping your stuff! I remember another post where you were considering dumping it.

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    1. Yup, a little over a year ago, when we were considering selling, I came across some of the old stuff and wrote about it. That stuff I really didn't go through so to discover something I have no recollection of writing was really weird.
      I was another person when I wrote the old stuff. It's amazing how we grow, not only as writers but as members of the club we call human.

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  3. I just discovered an article with recipes from something I posted on Pinterest. I'd forgotten I'd submitted stuff to a site I believe you referred me to: Divine Caroline. Actually re-reading it brought a smile to my face because it was the onset of creating my blog, Cooking On A Budget!

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    1. Isn't it wonderful to replay the origin of something which affects your life? That's why I loved working on my memoir/essay collection (way back when) because each piece had a story and each piece created fallout. I love that kind of stuff.

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