This past year I have been pulled in all directions except the one where I sit at my keyboard and write on my WIPs. The past couple of weeks I have been attempting to reboot my mental processes toward that goal. I started by recreating my editorial calendar and trying to find time to make a post to one of my 4 blogs each day that I’m not working on school assignments. Finding topics, organizing my thoughts and putting the words in order, then reaching a conclusion or, at least, a sensible stopping point has been useful.
As part of my effort to regain some sort of literary momentum, today I went to the home of the Friday Fictioneers to check this week’s writing prompt. As I looked at the picture, I was reminded of a planned scene from one of my projects. I couldn’t exactly call it a WIP because I haven’t worked on it in several years. It grew out of a story I wrote for school. I did work on it quite a bit back then, say around 2007 til 2009. At first it was just a couple of stories about a young girl during the sixties. But the concept drew me in and I began to expand it. I had a folder on my hard-drive where I kept the stories and a list of potential characters along with a plot summary and half an outline. It was going to be my first book effort.
Later I added a new set of files to the folder. A science fiction story I had written for the old Friday Fictioneers kept pulling me back in and I decided to develop it into something more. Again, I created a cast of characters and drew up a plot line. I was having fun with it, but I got side tracked by life.
Today, I went looking for the folder. It’s gone. I’ve changed hard drives and computers several times over the past year. Hardware has not been my friend. Every time, I tried to make sure I copied all the files from the old one, but I wasn’t thinking of writing, and I must have overlooked it. I shouldn’t have much trouble recreating the science fiction one. The original stories are still here, on the blog.
But the other one, the main one, exists only in my memory. The idea is still in my head, somewhere. I remember most of the two stories I had written and the outline of the one that fits the picture prompt. But they’re gone. Both my brain-children are lost. I will try to rebuild it, but I am afraid I may find Frankenstein hiding in the shadows. I now understand how people can say a book was ten years in the writing.
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