C. N. Garraway

Photo by: Veerapong Boonporn

Do you have your own slush pile?

It’s okay if you do. All of us writers have stories or novels that we threw in the slush pile or just abandoned. You started writing the beginning, and you got at least 3 to 10 pages, and just abandoned the project. I have done this, and I have at least 20 partially written stories. Some are only one sentence; and others are an opening paragraph.

Sometimes the story or novel is finished. You may have sent your story or novel to a critique group or beta readers. You loved the story and thought it was awesome to only get it back, and it was with riddled plot holes, character arc issues, too much telling, and barely any showing.

Recently I went back and read many of the short stories I’ve written when I was a teenager and young adult. I wanted to see if I still enjoyed reading them. One story was called Whose Fate? I loved that story. The first few pages of it were critiqued by a writers’ group years ago. The feedback was great. I never made time to revise it; I went on to other writing projects. Recently, I decided to resurrect it. I read through the story, and it was cringeworthy. There were some good essences of the story there, but it will need heavy editing. I did way too much telling and not enough showing.

It was clear I was trying to be poetic with my prose and missed the mark. The story was suffering from multiple personalities. I was told this years ago when I first wrote it. Overall, it needs a rewrite. Don’t ever throw a story away. There is always a way to bring it back. It may not always need a total rewrite, maybe a few scenes. Sometimes a story needs to be told from a different POV. Keep the bones and remove everything else.

So, grab those short stories or novels out of the slush pile and have fun rewriting them. Hey, you might just turn it into a series. I truly believe once I rewrite it, it will be the story I always wanted it to be.  

Do you have a story or novel that needs resurrecting? If so, share below.