Works In Progress

Fiction is a great outlet. However, with my imagination, sometimes I get multiple ideas at once, and I know that if I don't write it down, I lose it. The result of this is I have found myself with multiple save files. The longer stories, or the ones that are close to done or are done, have their own save files. I also have one save file that is approximately twenty pages of snippets of dialogue or situations, and it keeps growing, because it's not as if my imagination stops once I have a set number of ideas written down.

There's something interesting that happens when I have that many ideas all in one save file. I think of the snippet dump file as a lost-and-found box, in which there are several different puzzles broken down into pieces I discovered, and it's not until I have enough of them that I realize how certain ones go together. I read through the save file, and I realize that some things from over two years ago, are actually scenes that happen later to the same people for whom I wrote a scene last week.

The big thing about the works in progress is that there is always progress; even if I don't see it right away, because the puzzle pieces aren't all there yet, the progress is there waiting to be pieced together. It becomes a lot easier to handle a twenty-page snippet folder when I know that at some point, I will be pulling pages of work out of it to make its own save file, to work on that story on its own.

It's important to keep typing, but it's also important to revisit what you write from time to time. It helps connect the dots for the various pieces you have standing on their own to make a short story. In some cases, it may help connect some short stories you put away over the years, which with a couple segue scenes could be made into a longer work. This is also a good way to look at how your writing style has progressed over the years; take a look at your lexicon, your turns of phrase, and how you have characters speak and interact. The progression may be subtle, but it will be there.

-A.M.W.