Sam's Writing Spot

Starting from Scratch

It is every writer's worst nightmare: you are working on a piece and then you realize you have to take it apart and start all over. You have already invested a considerable amount of time in it and the thought of scrapping it just kills you. What do you do? Well, besides cry and have a total nervous break down!

You embrace it and go with it. I have been working on a short story for a contest for over a month. I based my story on a local legend in my area and after doing some digging (which I had been meaning to do for some time) I realized that I have to make some major changes to my story. At first I was a little beside myself, did I really want to go back and change it, or did I want to keep it as it was. Since it is fiction it probably doesn't matter if I change or not. But what I was questioning was the integrity of the piece. Because I like to use history as a backdrop for my work, I wanted to keep this little story as close to the local legend as possible. Which would mean I would be going back and changing almost all of it. So, after much thought I have decided that I am going to go back and change the story. Since it is only a short story I won't have too much to cut and change. And it won't change the plot of the story too much. It will alter it, but I will still have my main characters and the original idea behind it.

So, lesson learned: do research before you start to plot your story if you are using a local legend. It will avoid the dreaded starting from scratch disease!