Draft Deleting? Don't Do It!

Today, I had a little time. I decided that I would have a look at the drafts that I have on Vocal. This is part of a long-term wish to have everything I've written on paper rather than virtually. I've not looked at them for weeks and something drew me to them, just to browse and see what was there.

10 pages. Some were ideas. Some were just pictures I'd saved from Unsplash which were distinct. I could see why I had saved them as looking at them again, I felt my brain setting into motion a storytelling idea. I moved on. Some were indices, incomplete, like all the stories that I wrote in 2024 - the index stops at the beginning of March, January and February listed with links. Would have been a great idea. Best laid plans and all that.

I was a little shocked by how many drafts there were. I thought I was quite methodical and tidy. I decided to read one or two. One called "The Odd Fellows" was a description of three different male characters at a traffic crossing. They sprang back in to my mind like a prophetic vision. I remembered being in the car and seeing this disparate group and thinking, "I wonder who they are and how they met" and so, I recorded it. That was all I'd done - a brief description of the men and how they looked and dressed. However, the germ of a story is there and I hope to return to it at some point.

I found a story called "Anchor" that I'd started for an unofficial challenge set by Randy Baker. I have no idea what the premise was for it. Take a word from a list maybe and make something from it? Who knows? But whatever the stimulus, I had decided to craft something.

I've not read this story for months, maybe even over a year. It's incomplete. I'm not going to go into the detail of it here because my hope is to finish it and publish it.

And I suppose that that is my point in writing this. I've written before about the guilt that I feel in leaving my stories to languish because I start them and sometimes, don't get to complete them. They are in a state of stasis, a collection of good intentions, left, uncared for. Honestly, I feel an immeasurable amount of guilt about them being neglected. Strange, isn't it? I suppose they are my creations and I have been invested in them but just couldn't complete them for whatever reason.

Reading "Anchor", I was transported once again into that writing headspace. I remembered my intention on writing it. I could visualise in my head once again what I'd been trying to convey when I'd originally started writing it. I could see the characters from the dialogue. I liked what I'd done. I did some tweaks while I was reading, made some edits, removed some words, made it flow, changed punctuation.

It was like revisiting an old friend. What was refreshing about it though was that with the time away from it, I was able to read it with fresh eyes. I had distance from it and the tweaks that I made, which I think make it flow better now, would not have been done at the time of writing. Letting it sit means that when I publish it, because of the amendments I've made after time away from it, it will be a better piece.

I'm itching to return to it now. Unfortunately, I don't have the time. It is my mantra, it seems. But I will complete it. Not today. But I will.

And what I've discovered is that it might actually be a better story as a result. It won't have matured like a fine malt; it will have sat, waiting but in the space between it and me, my ideas will have grown and I will be able to come back and hone it into something better than it was when I left it. I certainly felt today that I improved it, shaped it into something more in the brief time that I was with it. I whittled away at it and gradually, like a Venus from stone, something beautiful emerged which was all my very own. Pretentious? Maybe a little.

So my message is this: don't throw your drafts. Keep them. Revisit them. Maintain copies of them. They may not be perfect currently but they could in time turn into something marvellous.

I'm off on holiday tomorrow so "Anchor" will have to wait (weight?) but I will take my notebook with me and with some mulling time, I will think about where I can take the story and perhaps more importantly, where I can be taken by the story.

And then, where you, dear reader, can be taken by it too.