The importance of recycling

How many times have you been told to 'kill your darlings' when writing? I was talking about this last week and what I suggested was that you don't kill them but perhaps you move them and I don't mean within the same story. There are times when they just don't belong however beautiful and well crafted they are.

What I suggest you do is create a darlings document. You then can move all these precious words into it as you never know when you might be able to use them again. We all know how hard they were to write in the first place. Why waste them?

As I have already told you I am rewriting again and I have suddenly find a use for elements of a novel I wrote a few years ago. Moments of Disjointed, a novel I am unlikely to ever try and get published, have jumped ship and moved into Trafficking. I did't anticipate this and hadn't thought about Disjointed for ages but then suddenly a scene from that story bounced into my head. A perfect episode that summed up an issue I was having in the rewrite. It gave me the sense of tension I wanted.

But it doesn't just happen in fiction, I have spent the morning beginning to write a chapter I am doing in collaboration with a good friend.  So far again the words I am using have been inspired by text I have used elsewhere. They are not strictly the same ones and are very definitely in a different order but there is an element of inspiration drawn from established 'darlings' that were tucked away in a more recently ignored folder entitled 'PhD bits.' All things that had never quite made it into the final thesis.

See it is all about the recycling and don't be afraid of it.

There is a caveat of course. Don't use those darlings just because you are in love with them however beautiful or clever they are. Even when you move them to a new story, make sure they fit and you are not trying to shoehorn them in. Remember you have plenty of writing life ahead of you when you can utilise them.

White Buffalo 'Wish it were true' .

Disjointed

Disjointed is a novel that started as my final year project when I was an undergrad. It was also the piece of creative writing that was responsible for me ending up doing a creative writing PhD that focused on the representations of sex, drugs and alcohol in YAF. Disjointed is a piece of YAF that looks at cannabis psychosis - not an on trend subject!!

Until recently it has resided in a bottom drawer which I always thought I would never revisit. However, whilst I am waiting for feedback from a publisher on Ham and Jam, another YA novel I have written, I thought I would look at it again and was quite surprised that it wasn't as desperate as I thought. When I first wrote it I did have some interest from a small publisher but they wanted me to change the psychotic voice to one that sounded like a hippy. Possibly arrogantly, I refused as that made a farce of the rest of the story.

Anyway I am thinking of rewriting it - which includes adding to it as at the moment it is too short. I want to make it darker as well. One of my main decisions is whether to change the setting. At the moment it is in middle England and I am wondering if I should move it to an inner city location - though is that a cliche and a little too predictable? Need to think on that one.

Coming back to a piece of old work can be daunting, in one way I find is like starting afresh and having pages of ideas to pick from but in another you try to have to pick up on the thoughts you had at the time of writing. You have to embark on that journey again. I found this quote recently in my PhD notes from Susan Sontag and I think it explains (not specifically) one of the aspects of writing for children really well, she says a novelist ‘...is someone who takes you on a journey. Through space. Through time. A novelist [who] leads the reader over a gap, makes something go where it was not' It is stepping into the experiential gap between perceived experienced adult writer and less experienced reader then inviting them to join and explore your story together. So I am going to pick up my Disjointed map and go for a trip whilst seeing if I can get any young adults to join me there!

I was looking for an appropriate song and came across this odd little song by Neil Diamond no less!