From a Dusty Shelf

If you’re not a writer, then you might not know that when we writers give up on a manuscript, when it’s dead and going nowhere, we say we’re shelving it. We shove it to the back of the tallest shelf, where it’s hidden from view, where we don’t have to look at it every time we sit down to write. It gathers dust. It sits there and it waits. Sometimes forever.

Last winter, I shelved the first YA manuscript I’d written. I’d queried it, contested it, and nothing came of it. Well, not nothing. My writing was good, agents said, but the concept wasn’t there. The stakes weren’t there. I had some requests, but never an offer of representation. So I shelved it and moved on.

But I loved that story. I’d based it on a semester of college I’d spent in Paris. I lived in a Parisian dorm, took classes at a Parisian college, and traveled on long weekends to Ireland, England, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and all over France. I discovered my love of art and lost my passport. The only thing that I didn’t have was a guy, a romance. So I took that semester of college and gave it to a teenage main character, adding that love interest that I’d wished I’d had.

Even after I shelved the story, I continued to think about, mostly because those five months abroad were a few of the most influential of my life. I still wanted that story to be told. But maybe it’d been enough to tell it to myself.

I moved on, wrote two more manuscripts. I recently shelved the first of those. The other I entered into Pitch Wars last month. I didn’t get a mentor and told myself I was taking a break before querying. I’m still on that break.

But, funny enough, a comment in one of my Pitch Wars rejection emails kept bothering me. Write something new, the mentor suggested. I think this was general advice, something the mentor told every writer who didn’t get picked to be a mentee. And the truth was, I’d be toying with a new idea for a few weeks. I just couldn’t get it to work just right.

Then I remembered that shelf where I’d shoved my Parisian story. Last week, I pulled that manuscript out of the dust, blew it clean, and began anew. I’m keeping the names of the characters, most of their personalities, and many of the settings. But I’m adding huge stakes and a massive change for the main character. She’s not me anymore, not even close, and I love her.

It’s been six days and I’m already 7,000 words in. I’m sticking with the goal I set for my last MS: 1K a day until I type The End, hopefully around 70,000 words. The best part is that I’m pulling words and phrases from my old manuscript, pasting them into my new document, and saving some writing that I’d thought was shelved for good.