I’m finish challenged. There, I said it.
I’ve made up stories, in a serious intentional way, since I was in Jr. High. I love having interesting characters come wandering through my imagination. The problem is they show me a scene, an interesting tid-bit, then they scamper off never to be heard from again.
I have notebooks spread all over my house with the scenes, some of them 80 or 90 pages in length, but no where will you find a complete story. Just samples, teasers, ideas. No order to them.
Except for one. I call it The Beginning. I was 19 years old, sitting behind the desk at the McPherson County Treasurer’s office. I was working in the tag department. Which meant hours of utter boredom. I don’t do boredom.
In front of me were these little 3-in. squares of paper. All different colors. So, I wrote to while away the boredom. At the end of the day, I’d rubber band those little squares together and take them home.
Fast forward. I’m married, I’m still bored, and I take those little squares of paper and write them out into story form. I have a lot there but…no ending. It took me 30 years and a seriously good online writing class (Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways) before I had the necessary tools to complete the story.
But writing a complete story doesn’t make it good. I had no idea what point of view meant. The head hopping going on in The Beginning is embarrassing now that I know better. The plot is trite although the theme is valid.
To make the story work it needs completely rewritten. Using the knowledge I’ve gained over the years about how to construct a good story. How to maintain proper point of view. How to pull out all of the tools I’ve gathered since that long ago time when a 19-year old jotted notes to relieve boredom.
I’ve decided to use The Beginning to my advantage. It’s going to get re-written. It’s going to be re-structured. I’m going to use all the skills at my disposal and turn the process into a serial offered on Wattpad.
I’m at a point in my career where I need visibility. I need to find readers who like and understand my work. I want to give back to the people who give me a chance. I’ve chosen Wattpad to be my proving ground. I’m going to allow others to watch the process of tearing a book apart and putting it back together in a proper manner.
It’s time to ‘fix’ a story that in its present shape isn’t good enough to be published. I’m going to resurrect the first book I ever wrote and ‘finish’ it properly.
