Look what I found

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​We didn’t get to move before Easter as we’d hoped, but all the legal paperwork has been completed now so we might have a moving date soon (she said, with fingers still tightly crossed).

When it does happen, packing up shouldn’t take too long. We had a big de-cluttering session when we first put our house on the market, and since then have resisted the temptation to buy or hoard anything we don’t actually need. Books are a necessity of course, but I’ve even forced myself to donate several bagfuls of those to charity shops. (My consolation is that I’ll have space for more bookshelves – and new books! – in the next house.)
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I was looking around, trying to estimate how many packing boxes we’ll need, when I realised I could probably discard some of the old papers/ files/ magazines etc. that I’d been keeping on my writing shelves ‘just in case’. I sorted through them and came across this …

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​ New ideas? Great, just what I need!

​I recognised a few plot outlines and character sketches because I’d already developed them into finished stories, but most of the other scribbled notes turned out to be either disappointing or puzzling. There were plot ‘twists’ involving unrealistic coincidences, pieces of flowery, descriptive prose that I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought were any good, and even some lines of dreadful poetry.

I dropped each of these rubbish ideas into the wastepaper bin, until I came across what appeared to be a title followed by a book jacket blurb. 

Who? What? When?

Ah, yes! It all came rushing back to me. 

It was an idea for a novel I’d started, but quickly abandoned, during an early NaNoWriMo. I’d hit a problem after furiously bashing out a couple of thousand words and, rather than waste time staring at a blank page, I’d switched to a completely different story.
  
Now, I not only remembered the opening scene of the novel in vivid detail, but I could also see why it had gone wrong and an easy way to fix it. I grabbed a clean sheet of paper and started writing a very rough synopsis of the whole thing before I forgot it again. I'm sure it has the makings of a bestseller!
 
And the moral of this story? WRITE IT DOWN. It’s vital to turn those first thoughts into visible words as soon as possible. You’ll be certain you’ll never forget such a brilliant notion but, if it does get lost beneath a myriad of even more exciting ideas, a few sentences might be all it takes to hook it out again.