Guess what I found buried in the back of the basement closet while I was moving? My college writing!
Oh yes, I shrieked with joy as I pulled the boxes out of the smelly dampness. I crowed with triumph as I loaded them into the car to take to the new house, for I thought I would find some gems I could fiddle around with.
Dismay hit me full in the face, however, as I removed the lids from the containers and reread some of these "diamonds in the rough". Out of the four boxes, out of the countless file folders, out of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages, I found only one short story that held any merit.
One. Short. Story.
I thought I was a literary genius in college. I thought all these years I would be able to just open the boxes and find the next Pulitzer Prize. I thought, well, never mind what I thought.
The cold hard truth stings when it slaps you in the face.
However, at least I can say with all honesty, I'm a better writer now. That helps ease the crushing blow somewhat. The really funny thing is, all of it, yes, ALL of those writings, those stories, are written in first person POV, which really blew my mind. I don't write in first person. EVER. I get blocked. Wicked blocked. So what's up with that I wonder?
Tell me, have you ever found something you wrote years ago? Was it any good? What did you do with it?
2 comments:
Thankfully all my early writing got burned with the rest of my home. Still, like you, I harbor the feeling that something valuable lay in those pages. I will never know now.
I believe that often first person narrative engages the reader easier and pulls them into the novel. It is only a feeling, Roland
I have a dilapidated orange folder filled with poems in my closet. On the occasions I dig them out, I laugh a little. I also have a stack of old diaries there too. I don't laugh at those. The writing is as immature as I was back then, but once in a while I read something I wrote when I was 16, or 18 or 20 and say, "Wow."
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