Bringing Back Old Stories

I think part of the success of writing is finishing what you start.  There are so many gems, and diamonds in the rough that end up as they say in the film community “on the cutting room floor.”

How many times have you started a promising manuscript only to let it lie for years? Sometimes, it is worth it to go back and resurrect that story, and other times it is best to let “sleeping dogs lie!”

While I know it is not good to use euphemisms, while writing, sometimes they do just seem appropriate. My sister Debbie and I years ago started a story that we thought was a bestseller in the making. We had a great plot, but as my sister said when she pulled it out to read back what we wrote, “It was a stinker.” That was one instance where the story should just stay a fun memory of the two of us spending time and attempting to create together.

Recently, though I had a wonderful time, I took an amazing sentimental journey bringing short stories I had written over decades, updating them, cleaning them up, and creating my first book with House of Honor, Farm Girl Adventures.

My late father Bill Disque was an artist, an amateur artist that left us with a wonderful collection of paintings. My mother Lora allowed me to use one of those paintings as the cover of my book, bringing the sentimental aspect of writing this story full circle.

Through Kim and Jack’s encouragement, I gathered several of my blog stories of exciting (to me at least) adventures I have experienced over the years. Turning these posts into stories is the foundation for my upcoming book True Farm Girl Adventures, an idea that without the La Fountains may never have come to fruition.

The joy of writing for fun, and for fiction has returned to me. I am in the process of cleaning up a project I began about a year ago, and just finished, a Christian mystery that is finding new life. There are several stories, it is amazing just how many are sitting there in files, partially written forms, or just as ideas. How many do you have? Are they fodder for a new book?

If they are not “stinkers” like the one my sister and I had, pull them out and finish them if for no other reason than to finish what you started, for that all-important, “the end” on a project that moved you, brought you excitement, and made you happy. While the element of writing a book is so that others will read it, I think that the completion, the dotting of the last period, is a success of its own for the writer. While of course it still needs the editing process, because most of us anyway, miss some grammar, story plot snafus, and other things along the way and need a cleaning process, still,l that initial finish is a rush.

So, what do you have on the back burner that should be brought to the front?  My friend Janna Seiz and I had a fun project we thought us years ago when our kids were young. Now with a little more time on our hands, we are diving into Breaking into Prison, a bad grandma story that may or may not come to life. Pulling the stories out of the archives has been a fun motivation for me, and I hope it may also be for you.

Cindy Ladage