The Project That Lurks

     This one is for all the writers, both actual and aspiring, who’ve ever contributed to “the trunk,” that charming Nineteenth Century metaphor for cherished mementos of one’s failures. As a frame for my main thesis, allow me to include two pithy statements by persons of almost exactly opposed convictions:

Nothing ever goes away. – Barry Commoner
Never throw anything away. – Robert M. Pirsig

     What’s this? Nothing ever goes away? Preposterous. Of course things go away. Sometimes they don’t go as far away as we’d like, but go they most certainly do. I could tell quite a tale about the many things that have gone away from me – in some cases, without my prior consent.

     And what’s this? Never throw anything away? Even more preposterous. Why, it verges on balderdash! If we never throw anything away, eventually we’ll have no room left and no way to move around. Our homes would resemble those that were featured on Hoarders. And let’s not forget what the neighbors would say about the stink.

     Writers know this. It’s a regular feature of our lives that things go away, and that sometimes we throw them. But they don’t always go away forever.

     Way back in the chaotic year of 1997, I started a novel. It was founded on two science-fiction motifs that, to my great surprise, had never been employed by another writer. However, the year was a poor one for me, fraught with difficulty and strife, In consequence, I carried that project forward by about 30,000 words and then…just left it lying there. But I didn’t throw it away.

     In 2009, I stumbled over that novel-fragment in the process of moving from one computer to another. After I’d read it over, I found that I could not remember what it was that kept me from pursuing it to completion. My old passion for the ideas in it flamed afresh, and I drove it to a conclusion that the earlier me would not have contemplated.

     You may have read that novel. It’s Which Art In Hope, the first volume of my Spooner Federation Saga. Many of my readers consider it my best. Sometimes I do, too.

     Something like that may have just happened again. I was reminded, a couple of nights ago, of an idea I popped some years back, just after finishing On Broken Wings. I pursued that idea for about fifty pages and…stopped. I can’t remember why. If memory serves, it’s been in “the trunk” since about 1997. Twenty-two years…but yesterday morning I unearthed it and reviewed it, and it will surely be the next novel-project I address.

     I could have thrown both those fragments away. I didn’t, and I’m glad. But now and then it’s necessary to let an aborted project “go gently into that good night.” I’ve started a project or two of that sort, as well.

     In 2007 I was struck by sudden, unaccountable inspiration. I turned out a novelette that was highly original by the standards of its genre, I was immensely proud of its backstory, plotting, and characterization. It was a hit with my readers as well. Within days after I released it, they began to hector me to fashion a novel from it. And being eager to please, I tried.

     I tried, and tried, and tried. God knows I tried. I’ve been trying for twelve years. Every attempt leaves me more frustrated than the previous one. I’ve come ever so reluctantly to the conclusion that I can’t do it.

     No, I haven’t thrown that novelette away. It’s still available. But I’ve discarded my unsuccessful attempts at extending it to novel-length, and all the ambitions that went with them. It was necessary, that I might get the idea off my mind to make room for things I can do.

     Such judgments are tough calls. Mine cost me a fair amount of anxiety. It’s impossible to be certain that they’re correct, whether at the moment or long afterward. But they’re part of a writer’s life. If you aspire to such an existence, you must be ready for them.

     You see, there’s a project lurking in your subconscious. It might have been there for a very long time, fermenting, gathering force, waiting for the best moment to spring itself upon you. You might or might not know its name. Those things don’t much matter. What’s important is the project’s existence in that murky realm below your conscious perceptions and deliberations.

     If that project has left a few bread crumbs in your trunk, stored there by an earlier, less hopeful you, you could well stumble upon them at any time, find them nourishing, and complete a proper meal from them. That’s why you must exercise restraint about throwing things away. But when that project elects to surface, there must be room for it. That’s why you must make the tough call, now and then, to discard some goal that’s proved unreachable de facto, not worth the grip it has on your efforts and thoughts.

     These considerations arise in every writer’s life. You’ll face them in your turn. You will suffer over them; that’s in the nature of the decisions involved. But it’s part of the price inflicted by the desire to create, and you will be forced to pay it.

     If you’re a writer, that is.