RESURRECTING AN OLD FRIEND

            The other day, I was purging file cabinets and shredding files. In one of them I found most of my old rejection letters. Not all 691 of them, of course, but a lot of them. As a bonus, I was able to tear off the cancelled (and some not used yet) stamps. While I have long given up on my regular stamp collecting, one never knows, but I digress. Besides the rejection letters, I also found more examples than I expected of old manuscripts. I think I printed them for friends, beta readers, just to have hard copies, or whatever. Needless to say, when I now have copies of the books published sitting in a box right next to me, there’s no need for an obsolete manuscript! It’s not like I’m Clive Cussler who had so many fans, he was giving out copies of rough edited manuscript pages at one time. Besides, what I have published now is so different in quality compared to the original that I’d rather it not be out there, considering how much more refined my chops are now.

            Amongst all of those manuscripts, I ran across a binder with the entire, hand edited copy of The Cave.

            As some of you hard-core fans may know, The Cave was the very first novel I ever wrote. My usual quote is that “The Cave will never see the light of day.”

            Why?

            My perception then was that while it holds affection as the very first one, it’s also before I knew what I was doing, therefore it’s probably so bad it’s beyond resurrecting.

LO AND BEHOLD

            Since I had this hard copy in my hands, before I shredded it, I wanted to make sure I still had a viable copy on the computer. THIS COMPUTER.

            When I pulled up the copy that has been transferred from computer to computer since 1995, it at least pulled up on the screen. However, the version of Word was so old that it wasn’t editable. In fact, it was so old that it wouldn’t even resave as the current version!

            What to do?

            The only thing I could do was select all (at least it would let me do that), and then paste all 82K+ words into a brand new file in the current version of Word. Therefore, The Cave, written in early 1995, now has a modern compatible and editable version readily available.

            Why should I bother?

            Lo and behold, before I even did this, I compared side-by side a few samples from the printed version to the old file and found they matched. Turns out, the last time I edited it (way back when), the version I printed WAS the last edit. I cannot recall who did the edit for me. Unfortunately, their name is nowhere on the sticky notes or the write-in edits.

A DISCOVERY

            Digging a little deeper, I noticed something. While the manuscript needs obvious work, on first blush in twenty-five years, it isn’t nearly as bad as I recalled.

            Without a complete read-through, I don’t know for sure, but The Cave almost looks like it might indeed be salvageable. If so, that means I might be able to add another genre to my growing resume. Science Fiction/thriller. Well, at least, that’s the sort of genre so far. I’ll have to go through it again to make a determination as to whether that’s a solid category or not.

JUST THINK

            I’ve said this many times before. I’ve never trashed an MS. I never really trashed The Cave. I didn’t take advantage of it because I didn’t think it was up to snuff. However, on second thought, after some sample paragraphs, there might be some life to it. If I’d really trashed it, I would’ve deleted the files.

            I DO have a few stories I’ve started but never completed yet. Why? I got distracted by other more pressing things. Those half-started stories will be completed someday, just not today. They don’t have a priority. That’s not my usual pattern, but a few times in my life, I’ve veered from my writing technique (one book at a time) due to life. Until recently, I’d forgot all about those.

            Just think, The Cave might be another book under my belt. Don’t get your hopes up yet. I still have to read through it all the way, then see if I had too much wishful thinking. However, it’s something I can work on between my other books and before I get my nose down deep into the third Meleena book again.

SUMMARY

            Never trash anything you’ve done!

            Never trash anything you’ve completed.

            Set it aside for however long it takes you to go back with fresh eyes. Later, it still may not be a winner, but maybe once again, by waiting, you’ll have better chops, have learned a few things, had more life experiences, something that makes you better prepared to fix or even just tweak that “hopeless” story you were so ready to dismiss.

            Will I be successful with The Cave?

            Maybe not, but at least I can give it a more experienced try. After all, it’s been twenty-five years.

            Happy writing!