Never Throw Away A Beginning

I can’t count how many times I’ve started writing a story and realized that it just wasn’t going to work. My first instinct is to delete everything I’ve worked on and start from scratch, but every time I get this inclination another, softer, voice tells me to go to the beginning and just press “Enter” enough times so that I can’t see the part that isn’t working. This process usually happens several times before the actual story even begins, if it begins at all, and once the story is complete I sometimes realize that the beginning I ended up with shouldn’t be the beginning at all. Maybe the beginning is somewhere in the middle. Maybe it is at the end. Maybe the real beginnings was one of the beginnings that I begun with. 

This is why I never throw away a beginning. Oftentimes, I find that unused beginnings have their place somewhere else--either in the story I am currently writing or one that I will write in the future. This same thought process applies not only to beginnings of stories, but to beginnings of chapters, paragraphs and even sentences. I never know when I’ll need them. So, what can I do with these beginnings in the meantime?

My solution is to save them, literally, in a file on my desktop, so that I can use them later. This file can be brought up whenever I really can’t seem to get a handle on the story I want to write. They provide me with a source of inspiration, or in many cases actual words, sentences, and paragraphs of material to pull from. The best part is that whenever I need to use this file it is often because I have other beginnings that aren’t working for that particular piece. In effect, for every one beginning taken, two are given and my bank of beginnings grows.

It is very easy to get frustrated when things aren’t going your way. There are times when I spend hours trying to make a story work until I realize that it just may not be time for that story yet. One of the favorite stories I have ever written, Heavy, was created from a beginning that was written a year prior. The beginning itself was only two paragraphs, but the story ended up being fifteen pages and I think it may have gotten me into graduate school. So, you never really know. Maybe you are reading something that you have written and thinking that it is awful--cut and paste it into a different file and save it. When your fresh eyes see it some time later, you may feel differently. It could even become a part of your favorite work, whether it be beginning, middle, or end.