No, we’re not discussing politics, classified documents, or dementia. The discussion today is about the forgotten literary treasure (written and then set aside) stashed in boxes in your closet, or tucked away on flash drives, or even CD’s, or even floppy drives. How many years ago would that have been?
I recently glanced back through the files on my Scrivener app as I began to work on my WIP. I noticed a story that I had written a couple years ago as an experiment, to try Kindle’s Vella (serialized fiction). My story was never noticed. I was told that I would need to make a fool of myself on TikTok if I wanted to make any sales. I took down the story, and thought I would publish it as an eBook, then realized I would need a cover. I set the project aside and forgot it.
As I began reading through the Scrivener file, I felt the excitement I had when I first wrote it. I thought, “This isn’t bad.” And I continued to read. I set aside my WIP, began to edit, and have now decided to publish it “properly.” I have my first beta reader reviewing the story, and am setting up a meeting with my cover artist. I wonder how many other experiments are buried on flash drives that are worthy of being reviewed.
So, TKZ community, what literary gold is buried in your boxes and flash drives, CDs, and floppies? What stories excited you in the past and have the kernel of a great idea that needs to be germinated and grown with your expanded toolbox of writing skills?
- Do you have any stories you initially set aside, then rewrote/edited and published later?
- Do you have any stories that are hiding in your files that deserve to be reworked and published?
- Tell us about them.
Vella is an oubliette, a place where stories go to be forgotten. My 140,000 word high fantasy, “Sorcerer of Deathbird Mountain,” has lingered there, unread, since June of 2021. I doubt if I’ll change a word of it. I’ve been meaning to take it down and concatenate the 59 episodes into a S-P book. I created a minimalist cover for it. Until I take it down, the first three episodes may be read free here: https://www.amazon.com/Sorcerer-of-Deathbird-Mountain/dp/B0991XQMFQ
I agree with you on Vella, JG. I guess it’s a good place to write a rough draft. My story was an experiment to see if I could write it without the safety net of an outline. Halfway through I brought in the safety net.
Thanks for the link to your story, “Sorcerer of Deathbird Mountain.” I like your “cover” picture. The story is excellent. I hope you do take the story down and publish it as an S-P book. ( hadn’t heard of them before. Very interesting.) That would make a great coffee table book.
Or, you can make a TikTok, dressed in the Sorcerer’s outfit, waving your wand at the viewer, and threatening them with ominous outcomes if they don’t read your story.
Thanks, for sharing, JG!
I’m assuming this is going to be eaten by the Killzone ogre but I’m taking the bait anyway. (I wonder if I’m on subversive writer’s list. The thought tickles me as I’m the most color in the lines person there is. I’m even still married to my original husband). Here goes…
I still love Family, my screenplay about a mom summoning her far-flung family home for Thanksgiving to save the family farm after her husband puts it on the market. It’s been suggested it should be a novel and I’m trying that. Oddly enough, the screenplay makes me laugh but the novel makes me cry.
The Tapestry Game – a short story about a headstrong Revolutionary War teenager who runs off to the future with her redcoat beau the night before the Battle of Lexington.
Christmas Wishes – screenplay I’m working on now. It’s basically Freaky Friday meets 9 to 5 at Christmas. A child-averse boss and his shy but ambitious secretary, a young widow with two rambunctious boys, switch bodies after Santa grants their wish at their office party. They have to switch back before Christmas or they’re stuck as each other permanently.
My life is super-stressful right now and this thing makes me laugh. I’d like a better title but haven’t thought of one yet. Feel free to suggest.
Wow, Cynthia, the Kill Zone ogre didn’t eat your post. Excellent!
I love your description of your stories. After you described your screenplay, “Family,” and it’s effect on you as a screenplay vs a novel, I thought how exciting it would be to be able to write both.
“Tapestry Game” sounds like a very interesting short story. Are you thinking about writing a novel or a screenplay? And I really like your idea for “Christmas Wishes.” Let us know when it’s published. I hope someone this morning gives you some good ideas for a title.
Thanks for participating this morning. Good luck with your projects!
So funny you should post this today. I wrote a romantic suspense several years ago called Lipstick and Gunpowder. Even had it professionally edited. Submitted it to Harlequin Love Inspired and was rejected. I pulled it out, dusted it off, and sent it into a smaller publisher as a series of 3. Voila! Got a contract for the 3!!
Congrats, Jane! Great idea. I like the title. A very creative way to reimagine your original story. I hope it does well.
Thanks for widening the possibilities this morning!
There was a request for stories for an anthology with the theme “Fresh Starts.” I never like to stop working on the WIP to do something else, but I look through my old files and found a short story I’d written when I was still with my Pregnant Pigs critique group. They’d convinced me to submit it to a local writing festival, so I did. Nothing. But I reread it. Didn’t seem awful. Sent it to my critique partner, who agreed it was a decent story. Submitted it to the anthology. It got accepted.
Congrats on your “Fresh Starts” themed story and its acceptance. Way to go. Perseverance.
BTW, I really like the name of your past critique group. Sounds like there should be a story to go along with that name.
Have a great weekend!
Yes, there is a story. We were in Florida, and there was an outcry about how pig farmers were caring for the pigs. A law was passed. The result? The pig farmers (I think there were 5 in the state) got rid of their pigs and found another line of work.
I bet there’s a story in there for one of your future books.
You would think, me being ADHD and all, I would have a gazillion half-finished stories languishing somewhere. But no. I still hear my parents drumming ”finish what you start” into my head.
My first novel which will never see the light of day because I shredded it, did end up being the basis for my first published novel. And parts of my second novel have shown up in different projects, including the book that just released. So no, I have nothing hiding from me.
Good morning, Patricia. Your parents would be proud of you.
I am glad to hear that your first shredded manuscript did provide some building materials for you first published novel. And same with your second novel. I bet your parents also drummed into you, “Conserve, reuse, and recycle.”
I forgot to mention in my intro that the Vella story I am recycling into a “real” book had elements in it that were from of my earliest short stories. Nothing wasted.
Thanks for participating!
Steve, good reminder to occasionally dig through old files. How great that your short story reignited your passion. Fun to look back on something written years ago and think, “Hey, that isn’t bad!”
I have folders of ideas for TKZ posts that I forgot about b/c something else distracted me–squirrel! If I get stumped for a subject, I mine those files.
I’m also thinking of starting a Substack with the seven+ years’ of posts in hopes of finding a new audience.
What I really want to find is that file I lost long ago named “Spare Time.”
Have a good weekend, my friend!
Thanks, Debbie.
Great idea for folders of ideas for blog posts. And Substack sounds interesting. I hope you will tell us more about Substack here at TKZ as you explore it. And when you find your “Spare Time” folder, let me know. Mine has been missing for years.
Hey, Debbie, I have a new idea for you. (I can see you shaking your head.) How about a short story anthology – “TKZ Hidden Treasure, Stories That Have Aged Like a Fine Wine.” I know just the person to edit and put it together. Ahem.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Hahaha, Steve! Yes, Dale is the perfect person to edit it 😉
I knew that eventually you would find someone else to pick on. Sorry, Dale.
Great post, Steve!
Back in 2011-2012 I worked on a novel which became a basis for an unfinished and unpublished serial about a paroled ex-super criminal named Jolene Jacobs. I poked at it a few times in 2014, shelved it again. But the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. So at the end of 2015, I finally had a handle on the book, and wrote it the following winter—Empowered: Agent. The series went five novels.
I still have two half-finished versions of a book called “Goblin Day,” a sequel to my published novel “Gremlin Night,” sitting in digital storage, and think about returning to the book, especially after being on a panel at a science fiction convention last November about reviewing old projects.
Finally, I have multiple attempts at a fantasy mystery story which I’d like to return to.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
That should have read a panel about “reviving old projects,” but reviewing is of course part of that process 🙂
Thanks, Dale.
Your description of the process of reviving old ideas and partially completed projects sounds interesting. I would have loved to hear the panel discussion at the sci-fi convention on reviving old projects.
Good luck with those projects, Goblin Day and the fantasy mystery. I hope they come together for you.
Have a wonderful weekend!
When I have told friends about my adventures on the road delivering pizza, several have said I should write a book. The first half is about a decade old. I lost about 6,000 words along the way and may need to almost start from scratch. One thing. A few years of reading KZB made the lost (web site folded and took my draft with them) was much better than the one I have now.
Good morning, Alan.
I bet you’ve seen it all, delivering pizza, seeing the open door into someone else’s chaos, and hearing them try to excuse it.
Good luck with your book. Are you going to title each chapter with the name of a different pizza? Have fun. And I hope your deliveries are filled with many new ideas.
Great subject, Steve!
I have a story idea just getting its sea legs in my files. It’s about a young Jewish woman who learns who it was who murdered her father when she was a child. She goes on the hunt for the murderer, seeking revenge, and ends up finding him in a Roman prison awaiting execution.
I’ve written some scenes, including the last scene, but at this point life has intervened, and I set it aside for a bit. I think about it constantly, even have had a few dreams where I’m following the MC on her journey of retribution.
It’s a story I’m determined to write-just don’t know when.
Thanks, Deb.
Your story sounds very interesting. Those recurring dreams are telling you that you need to write the story. I hope you can find the time to do it.
I bet that we all have stories we’ve set aside. A little experimentation with our writing may be a good way to learn. Our OCD selves always want to “get it right” the first time. I seem to need to do it wrong about three times before I finally find something that works.
Good luck with that story! And have a successful writing day!
“In each of us there is an ʘther, who we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams . . .” –Carl Jung
Great topic, Steve. I’m glad you told us about Vella. I was thinking about having one of my middle grade characters serialize her novel on Vella, but that doesn’t sound like such a good idea now. Maybe I can talk her into publishing it in a short story series. (Have you ever heard of a character in a novel publishing something?)
Like Patricia, I had parents who insisted that I finish what I started, so I don’t have any books that I wrote but didn’t publish. I do have quite a few scenes that I’ve written but then cut from the end result. They’re still in Scrivener, though, so I may pull them out to use in another story.
Thanks, Kay
It sounds as if many of us have had parents that told us to clean up our plate and finish one thing before we get something else out.
I’m still thinking, but not coming up with a character who published a book. There have to be some, with all the movies about the subject.
If you go the Vella route, maybe you can find a friend’s middle-schooler who is a drama queen and could make TikToks for you to advertise the book. I don’t know. I wouldn’t let my child do that. But it’s a different world now.
Good luck with your middle grade book!
What if I told you, there’s an entire community of book lovers on TikTok, called #BookTok. No foolishness required to sell books there. 😉
I’ve picked clean all my old trunk novels. Meaning, stolen and enhanced a former character, crime scene description, and signature of the killer(s). Hence why we should NEVER throw away our darlings. You never know when something may fit elsewhere.
Hope you have a nice weekend, my friend.
Thanks, Sue. I’ll check out #BookTok. Maybe you can tell us all the ins and outs of #BookTok and marketing there in one of your future blogs.
Your description of picking clean all your old trunk novels reminded me of the way I never throw anything away. You (I) might need it someday. My wife allows my hoarding as long as it doesn’t spill outside of my shop or tractor shed.
Your description of picking clean drew an image in my mind of a skeleton, picked clean, hanging in your backyard, with Poe (the crow) perched on his skinny friend’s collar bone and guarding your property.
Have a great weekend!
I salvaged a ms I could not sell, rewrote it as a sci-fi/mystery tale, and resubmitted it. My efforts paid off when it made the cover of Mystery Magazine.
Congrats, MC. Wonderful example of hidden gold in those old manuscripts. I hope you have that cover of Mystery Magazine framed and hanging in your writing room.
Waste not. Want not.
Thanks for telling us about your success.
I should mention that I received a $5 “bonus” from Vella for “Sorcerer of Deathbird Mountain” last March. In 3 years, it got 5 thumbs up, 16 episode reads, and $0.15 in royalties. I’ll eventually pull it and publish as an e-book.
Did you frame that $5.00 bonus?
No gold in my old files, Steve, but there are three chapters of a truly awful serial killer novel. My editor read it and said, ‘You’re no Thomas Harris.” Too bad he was right.
Good morning, Elaine.
Your editor was blunt. Maybe the chapters are “truly awful,” but maybe there are some ideas, characters, settings, etc. that could be “repurposed.” Just sayin’.
Thanks for participating in the craziness today!
It took 4 years for my agent to sell a novel for me. In those 4 years I wrote several more romantic suspense novels. One called The Dead Parents Society. Another titled False Note. Among others. My agent thought they were too “gritty” for the CBA market, but somedays I still hold out hope for The Dead Parents Society in the general market . . . . one day.
Thanks, Kelly for telling your story. Wonderful determination. And way to go continue writing. Your persistence will pay off.
Good luck with The Dead Parents Society. Let us know when you finally publish it.
And thanks for participating and providing inspiration!
When I finish my mainstream trilogy, Pride’s Children, with the final volume, LIMBO, sometime in the next five years, I will go back to the first two novels in a mystery series I still love but which probably require serious work, and see if all that invention, and expenditure of a lot of my experience (first novels tend to get that because that’s what drives us to begin writing for publication), and some characters I still believe in, and see what I can do.
With my energy levels, there’s no way I can do that now, but it does serve as a tiny light at the end of the tunnel. And I really loved my amateur detective, and her semi-accidental connection to the world of research physics, engineering, and the Cold War. Maybe some day. The first book got several nice handwritten notes from agents who requested fulls back then. I think I was too green. Several of those notes said, ‘Send us your next one.’
Good evening, Alicia. Thanks for your thoughts.
Good observation that the love and expenditure we put into some of our initial efforts is a good forecaster of treasure to be found. I hope that light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and bigger quickly, and you are able to find a lot of gold in those two stories. Let us know when you publish your reworked novels. I bet there will be great satisfaction on your part.
Have a great weekend!