False Starts

I have something I must write. It's for an assignment, but it's giving me a bit of trouble.

I've made two false starts. That expression comes from the world of racing. On your mark, get set . . . but before the starter can pull the trigger, a runner takes a step, too eager to get going.

Two stories. Five and a half pages. I've abandoned it all. That's right, just let it go. Maybe I'll go back to it some day, maybe turn it into a poem, but I doubt it. It just wasn't good. That's all there is to it.

On the other hand, I think of it as priming the pump. I was writing, putting words down on "paper," getting the thoughts flowing in a fictional stream. So although those first two efforts were flotsom and jetsom, they prepared the way for better writing.

I'm still not sure that the writing I've just done is good, but I know that it's better than what came before. I started with such a thin line of an idea. Tenuous. Gossamer. I could scarcely hang on to it, but I thought if I wrote for long enough (probably it was at least an hour), the amoeba-like writing would take on a more definite shape. It would go somewhere and all I'd have to do to get the story is follow it.

The dialogue developed in fits and starts. I played "What If?" I asked myself, What if someone said that to me, what would I say? And then I put that thought in as the next line. I built the conversation from the ground up, on one "what if" after another.

The important lesson here is that sometimes the initial attempts are not the story at all.