Tuesday, May 5, 2015

A Writer's Habits--To Save or not to Save

Over the years I have accumulated a number of manuscripts that will never be published. Sometimes the story just doesn’t work, or the ms has been turned down so many times that I give up on it. For a long time I saved these old mss, thinking that one day I would use a part in another story. After reading a mystery novel by Julian Symons (and I can no longer remember which one), however, I have changed my practices.

A prolific writer with many interests in fiction and nonfiction and one of my favorite writers, Symons
wrote 29 mystery novels; 33 works of nonfiction; including biography, autobiography, history, and criticism; 2 collections of poetry; 9 collections of short fiction; and edited 8 collections of fiction or nonfiction. His history of crime fiction, Bloody Murder, is a classic and an original perspective on the genre. But in addition to his many mysteries, I remember him for something that was probably not meant to be memorable.

In a mystery novel about an architect (I apologize for not being able to identify the title), Symons describes everything in the novel in terms of angles, sharp corners, flat planes, stark floors and ceilings, and the like. There is no softness, warmth, or curving in this story, except for one character. As I recall, the character was named something like Uncle Puffer, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the description of this sweet, warm-hearted, soft and round-shouldered fellow with the lopsided smile was the antithesis of everything else in the novel. I mentioned this to another writer, and we both jumped on the only explanation. At some point Symons had written a description of a character, not found a use for it at the time, and kept it. He popped it into this particular novel, where it stood out like a glass of milk at a sports bar.

Symons was a great writer who came up with stories and ideas that will continue to entertain and surprise readers. But he taught me something unexpected in that novel. Everything in a piece of fiction has to belong, has to have its organic place in the story. This description of Uncle Puffer, as I’ve named him, did not fit, and the dissonance between that description and the rest of the novel is what I remember. Perhaps this is a case of failing to “kill your darlings,” as Oscar Wilde, William Faulkner, and many other writers have advised. Perhaps Symons merely didn’t want to waste a fine character description—and it was vivid—but either way, he should have left it out.

I have interpreted this reading experience differently from what might have been expected. If I write a novel or short story and later feel that it doesn’t work, I might keep the plot or the title, but the rest of it goes. I don’t keep passages to rework into something new. When I write a story I believe the experience has to be fresh for me or it won’t feel fresh and new to the reader. As hard as it is, and it’s actually not as hard as I thought it would be, I toss any ms that didn’t work. I delete it from my computer, and I recycle the printed pages. When I begin a new ms, I want a fresh start every time.


14 comments:

  1. Susan, you are so right about needing a fresh start. I have suitcases filled with short story and novel manuscripts. Don't know what I'm saving them for. My writing style has evolved and, I like to think, improved. I may be able to use some of the characters in these works, but I'll need to write them afresh into new stories.

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    1. When I saw the stack of mss I had in the closet I knew I had to get serious about keeping or tossing them. I too like to think my writing has evolved, improved, and that going back is pointless. Thanks for commenting.

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  2. I'm not certain I entirely agree. I sometimes go back to work that hasn't sold and put on my editorial hat to see what is wrong or right about it. Sometimes the work is worthy of a rewrite. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

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    1. I have only two mss I have kept after many years. I don't know if it's sentiment or something else. I didn't mention self-publishing, which is where a lot of rejected mss now end up. And I'm reminded that Five Star began when so many writers were being dropped by their publishers and had books they wanted to place.

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  3. Susan, I never thought of the danger of popping a beloved character from an unpublished/unpublisable older manuscrip into a current work as being a dangerous practice, but you made the point perfectly. This would be true of many description of settings, as well. I don't plot my stories out ahead of time, so, like you, I think of them as organically grown. Flowers from old gardens might just spoil the new one. Thanks for posting this.

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    1. On the face of it, the idea of reusing old material makes sense, but then I saw what it did to Julian Symons's story and had to rethink it. Thanks for commenting.

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  4. You make a good point, Susan, and I agree that re-using pieces of manuscripts is probably not a good idea. But deleting and shredding the only evidence I have of how hard I've worked to learn the craft? I just can't do it. All that stuff is going to sit there and wait until the day my kids have to clear out my clutter.

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  5. Pat, you know your kids are going to sit down on the floor or the sofa and start reading. Can you hear the comments? "Why didn't she publish this?" Maybe you should leave a few notes scattered around. Thanks for commenting.

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  6. Enjoyed your post, Susan. I never throw anything away, but I don't believe I'd ever lift something from one manuscript and use it in another story just to use something I'd written and liked.

    Everything in a story must be organic to that story. Most stories don't have interchangeable parts.

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  7. That's my point exactly. Thanks for commenting, Joan.

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  8. I've used parts of a story after pulling and saving them. In one case, I began a story with a sniper on a rooftop waiting for the right time to pop a politician down below. I decided to begin that story another way but saved that opening. Years later, I pulled that unused opening out and began another story with it. This time, the opening stayed and the story went out and picked up a Derringer award. It doesn't often happen, but I save everything. You just never know. Earl Staggs

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  9. I'm always glad to hear the other side, Earl. I think it's interesting that you saved the beginning of a story, so that whatever you wrote came out of that opening. The saved part was essential to the new story. This may be the exception that works. Thanks for sharing this.

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  10. Here's another aspect to the keep or throw dilemma. Posterity. Like Earl pointed out, sometimes it is useful. But mostly I keep everything as part of my personal record of my work. Since a goodly chunk of it is digital, that's not such a big deal, even in my cramped living space.

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  11. That's an interesting point, Anne. I've never thought much about posterity except that I'd like my books to survive in libraries. Beyond that, I don't know who would be interested. I'm planning on shredding everything I don't publish. I'll have to think about that.

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