It is another unusually cool January evening – while one may say that it is the time for beautiful snow and white Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a completely different story for us living in the tropics, especially near the equator. Still, the combination of the cool seasonal Siberian breeze and a cup of peppermint green tea calms my mind as I start to create a piece based on an idea I had envisioned just a few minutes ago.
I begin writing the first paragraph of my intended creative nonfiction piece, then the second, the third, and the fourth. All I need to do is gather my wits, power on, and make it to the end of the line, so I at least have an initial draft in the worst possible scenario.
All of a sudden, I am at a loss for words… and what was supposed to be a well-thought and novel idea for my essay peters out to nothing in an instant. Not even the stereotypical wisps of smoke remained inside my brain – nada, zilch, zero.
Then, I wait for an hour as I stare blankly and mindlessly at my computer screen. Later on, I try to break through what I thought was a typical creative block by playing Counter-Strike, watching Netflix, and reading poetry.
However, none of these things worked.
Next, I take a break and try to find the stars that are simply impossible to see under the oppressive lights of the tropical megalopolis that is Manila. Although the lights overpower and drown out the colors and radiance of the night sky most of the time, there are moments when stars shine through all that light pollution and gleam with all their flicker and hue. Here, I think, focusing on something else unrelated to writing would surely help me break through that creative block.
It was just as useless as talking to a wall.
Finally, I come to the realization that this particular creative work was a lost cause.
Oh no, not again. Damn.
It becomes clear that I am stuck in another creative limbo. There is no doubt anymore that the piece won’t work itself out – and that it is time to abandon this particular writing effort. Alas, time for this text to go into the back pile, the slush pile, or whatever they call for the back alleys of creation and writing these days.
Another half-finished work of writing goes down the proverbial drain.
There are times, though, that these works come back from the grave, not as zombies and ghosts come back to haunt one’s mind, but instead as resurrected, regenerated entities that see again the light of day (and if lucky or polished enough or both, would see publication somewhere).
I used to believe that discarded ideas and pieces are useless – and are considered a waste when it comes to one’s writing and creative journey. I thought they were hopeless – and they would gather dust in a corner of my room.
As someone who has dabbled in creative nonfiction and poetry for the past five years, my experience has proven that the idea in the previous paragraph is not true at all. I also have seen many others struggle with their creative ideas, only to find another way to reconceptualize and rewrite them somewhere down the line and turn them into something that they could proudly publish somewhere.
As a result, I take solace nowadays in the fact that sooner or later (or even five years later), the piece is going to resurrect itself, get a life of its own, and contribute to my writing journey and turn into a masterpiece that I would be proud of.
Take, for instance, something like travel writing: I wanted to write about my experiences in Istanbul for a national newspaper here in the Philippines many years ago. For some reason, my manuscripts never got to see the light of day; heck, even my pitches were quickly thrown into the virtual trash bin.
However, after finding a different angle to rewrite and reframe my travel feature, I was able to publish it in a reputable newspaper. Of course, in comparison to things like long-form essays, poetry, and other forms of literature and writing, this may not sound much, but at least it’s great to see the little victories that come from writing ideas that would have stayed in the grave!
Indeed, I think that it is not a weird concept to say that discarded ideas could be alive and kicking all over again. Many of the established principles that writers learn (and follow) when creating their own works already give a clue to this phenomenon.
To start with, it is an established fact among writers, no matter their genre, specialization, or amount of writing experience, that a piece of bad or unfinished writing is always preferable to having no output at all, if only for the simple reason that the former is still salvageable, malleable, and editable (in one way or another).
Whereas there was nothing that could be done if a writer did not write anything. After all, if the paper is blank, what is there to edit and refine?
The truth of the matter – and it’s something that I’ve had to learn the hard way – is that in the world of writing, discarded and unfinished ideas aren’t necessarily bad – and they don’t stay dead forever. Sooner or later, they would gain an afterlife of their own, although it usually leads to something that has never been visualized at the time of creation.
You might have wanted a poem. Instead, you get a biographical novel! Or it can be the other way around too.
Alternatively, those discarded ideas only need to be finished and refined to become works that could be published or shown to readers. Many essays, short stories, and novels came into existence in this way.
Finally, the ideas we discard in the creation of a particular piece of writing or art can be used as supplements when creating another text or creative work in another format. Isn’t this the thing we do when we create erasure art and poetry? Don’t we create something new and unique out of an obsolete or unrelated text? Isn’t it the very definition of upcycling and restoring a text to a new, refreshing blaze of glory?
Even in the worst-case scenario, those ideas from the past could serve as signposts and inform us as we steer that particular creation toward its completion at the end of the writing process.
Take for instance a particular science fiction short story focusing on a hypothetical foreign invasion of my home country, entitled “Standing for a Tattered Flag,” that I penned for a national literary magazine in the Philippines in 2018. At first, I could not finish it; however, after two weeks on the writing backburner, I finally got the creative juices to wrap up the whole shebang.
However, when I submitted it to that particular national literary magazine, it was pretty clear that they would not accept the piece; there was neither an acknowledgement email nor a form rejection letter even after months of waiting. At the time, I did not realize the reason behind it – so I decided that the story was trash; I placed the work inside a paper box in my room.
Four years later, a new publisher in the Philippines called for science fiction stories for a literary anthology. I decided to go to my pile and see what I could do regarding the story I wrote in 2018.
That’s when I saw how immature I was as an aspiring writer back then.
I then realized that I needed to fix the grammar of “Standing for a Tattered Flag” – as well as enrich the descriptions, the context, and the characters of the whole story. In addition, I made sure that the story actually expresses something beyond its lines – and I took pains to make edits to turn it into a plausible, conflict-driven, high-stakes, socially relevant, and grounded science fiction story.
Still, when I submitted the story, I did not place high hopes on it. I thought that it would be rejected one way or another; as far as I knew, many science fiction writers wanted to be a part of that particular anthology.
Thus, it came as a pleasant, and totally unexpected, surprise when I received an email one month later stating that my story had been accepted for publication. I was totally in shock – I never thought that the story I wrote in 2018 would ever get published at all. But then, there it was, inside a major literary anthology, along with those of my friends from my Creative Writing course and some well-regarded names too!
In addition, it was my first-ever science fiction story to be published in print for widespread distribution (well, given the saturated art and creative market that we live in, this might be a bit of an oxymoron). Regardless of this reality, who would have thought that a scrappy fiction story written years ago would lead to this?
After this episode, along with many other similar instances back in the past, I realized that discarded ideas are a part of the creative journey. No single creative work is the same; when I tried to compare my published works now and those published several years ago, I couldn’t help but laugh at the evolution of my personal writing journey, as well as the stark difference in my craft back then.
As a result, I started to take a different approach towards discarded ideas in my creative path: I stayed calm and composed as I placed them into a specified place on my bookshelf, knowing that sooner or later, I would be able to use them in my other writing projects in a more effective manner. In fact, whenever I write something that results in a discarded idea or text, my wife always reminds me not to throw it into the trash bin and keep it carefully as it might be able to gain a second life of its own.
Yes, ideas and writings unfinished can have their own afterlives – and even turn out way better than ever imagined.
Earl Carlo Guevarra is a Filipino writer who hails from Zamboanga, a city in Southern Philippines. Currently residing in the heart of Manila, he enjoys traveling to far-flung places and consuming enormous amounts of fruit tea.