Stalled

I’m certain we all have stalled pieces. Stories that never went anywhere. Unfinished novellas. Maybe two or three first acts of a novel. You know what I’m talking about—those great ideas you could never get to gel no matter how hard you tried and how many times you wrote and rewrote.

Do they ever go anywhere? For you, I mean. Has anyone ever gone back to one of those promising but unfortunate false starts and picked it up again and started writing and everything just clicks and you’re thinking, Holy shit, why didn’t I think of this the first time?

This morning I was paging through the file folder where I keep all the stillborns. I read a couple here and there (they still frustrate) and it occurred to me—I don’t think I ever have gone back to one of these successfully. I couldn't think of a single thing I’ve consigned to that region of hard drive hell that's ever made it back out for another breath. I usually chalk it up to my own inexperience; the idea is great but I’m just not the writer I need to be to pull it off successfully—yet.

Now I wonder if maybe it’s not that at all, if some things just never come to fruitition.