This is why I keep old bits of writing

For every piece of writing that I actually complete there are close to a dozen projects that end up in my slush pile folder. Really, my slush pile is a mish mash of half written things. Often, I'll get an idea, jot it down and work on it for an hour or two before deciding that it's no good. I'll quickly move in into slush. Abandoned and forgotten, until the next time I decide to explore it's dark recesses.

Tonight, I decided to crack open the musty box that is my slush pile. As usual, the journey made me want to vomit at the awfulness of most of the ideas and juvenile rubbish that lies in the dark corners of this pile. I often think that if a shredder was close at hand the pile would be reduced to mulch in a matter of minutes. Perhaps it's a good thing that's never been the case, I'm not entirely sure. Never-the-less I steel myself many times and cringe as I pass by notes, dialogue and characters that should never see the light of day. Eventually, I find the things I've been looking for. Those few nuggets that have been written with the best of intentions, but have sadly been pushed aside because I just don't have the time. Eventually, the ideas have ended up in slush because they've been cluttering up my desk, or desktop for far too long. They are not bad ideas, just ideas that I never had time for.

Tonight's voyage into the clichéd, juvenile and sickeningly bad beginnings to dreadful projects revealed something though. It's dated February 2011. That was around the time that I'd just finished playing Laurie in Little Women (Carlton Players). I've put it in PDF format here for people to have a look at. It's nothing actually special yet.

It does prove one thing to me though. Some ideas just stick. Sure, they may change form and shape-shift beyond recognition before they are fully realised, but writing ideas do tend to linger and re-suggest themselves many times over. 

I've actually managed to spend nearly an hour putting together bits of scenes I've already written for this project and plugging them into another project that I've nearly completed. In other words, in just an hour I've gone from a project that had been put on the back-burner, to a project that is almost at the editing stage.

This is why I keep old bits of writing. It's why I don't shred my slush pile. It's why I don't ever throw notes or notebooks away.