I have this…cache…of story projects deemed “Never See the Light of Day.” It’s named as such because they are all completely inane plans that tend to border on a touch weird. At least in my mind. I don’t quite know how to explain them. And I have no intention of ever actually sharing them with anyone else because they’re just…no. It’s mostly random conversation snippets that crop up in my head between given characters, but I write them because they’re fun. I write them because I can. Because no matter how utterly ridiculous it might be, it’s still writing. And while the plot might be severely lacking, the writing itself usually isn’t all that bad.
So why bother mentioning it?
One of these…projects…spawned an idea for a short story that I wrote a few years ago. The original story it stemmed from was this wholly unbelievable plot that was just insanely ridiculous with the circumstances it involved and the number of characters I kept piling on and overall would make a horrible story, but it was still a lot of fun to play around with. Yet there was this one piece that stuck in my head. I started to fixate on it. I realized that by changing around certain pieces, I could actually make it work on its own. The first part fell into place in no time. The second part…I think took me another two years to get it right, if I remember correctly. But once it was finished, I was pretty happy with it.
I’ve been struggling to get back into writing lately. Something prompted me to dig out that short story this week. I read through it, anticipating hating it. It was actually a lot better than I remembered it. Especially for something that I started five years ago. It could definitely use a lot of editing, but the core of the writing doesn’t suck. I’m surprised. The biggest problem with it—there are a few obscure references to that original whacked story plan that only I would understand and would make everyone else stop and think, “Wait—what? Where’d that come from?”
So herein lies my dilemma. I’d like to edit this thing and attempt to fix it up. As far as the cryptic references go, I have to decide whether or not I should try to eliminate them completely and patch up the holes, or if I should try to elaborate on them and give them adequate detail to make them make sense. I guess I’ll have to read through it another time or two and see how it sounds as is and go from there.
I suppose if I spent half as much time working on it as I do analyzing and agonizing over it, I might actually make some progress on this editing. But this is me we’re talking about. I can never do anything the easy way. My brain doth not function like that.
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The Old Apartment Barenaked Ladies |