If you follow this blog, you know I’ve been engaging in that horrid pastime of housecleaning this month. On Friday, I tackled a stack of papers, spiral notebooks, and writing magazines. When I reached the bottom, I found a ring-binder. When I opened it, I saw this heading on the first page, “Writing the Romance Novel.”
Oh yes, I thought, these are hand-outs from the RWA chapter I joined after I started writing my first novel. (No, it wasn’t a Romance, but at the time I thought it was.) I had opened this binder before, had the same thought, and put it back down. However, this time I looked closer.
I saw now these were printouts from a website, dated January and February 2000. These were lessons from a Virtual University course. I started paging through them and the name Anne Elizabeth Garrett caught my eye. Hey, I thought, I once named a character Annie Garrett. I started reading—Duh! This was a two-page bio on that character. I had in my hands the homework assignment I’d completed for that week’s lesson.
So … yeah.
I know my brain’s a little creaky, but it really creeped me out to realize I’d taken a writing course I didn’t remember. At all. Unfortunately, though I have all seven weeks’ lessons printed out, I have homework printouts for only two. Did I not complete the course, or just not print out the homework? Have I just not run across the other pages yet? Could these assignments be on my hard disk in some obscure folder, or were they written to floppy disks, which I burned last year, but couldn’t access even if I hadn’t?
Does the fact I’ve never written a Romance novel hold the answer? *Sigh* The world may never know.
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Linda Cassidy Lewis 
Maybe you have written a romance novel… If you find that disk there may be another long lost assignment. Wouldn’t that be cool! The forgotten novel. (Okay, I’m being silly. I guess I’m just in a silly mood, but I would love to find a long lost story or even character sketch)
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Could be, Candi, and that Romance novel would be a bestseller … only problem is, it was written with WordPerfect and when opened in Word all the letters appear as some strange hieroglyphics! 🙂
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I like your photo for this post. She looks so shocked.
I had my novel packed away for a few years when I had neither time nor a computer to devote to it. When I found it, I started to throw it in the trash. I decided to browse though it first. I’m glad I did.
Maybe the novel you first wrote and are now revising will turn out to be your best work (your second to be published, of course). You never know what the future holds, but why not believe it will be good?
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Ha ha, that’s an old photo of someone dear to my heart. 🙂
I’m too much a packrat to throw away writing. Even if you don’t find anything usable, it might be evidence of your growth as a writer.
And, yes, why not believe the future holds good things?
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Linda, amazing you can’t remember the course. I recently went through two files. I threw everything away in the first one. And in the other, I found some old writing that I’d forgotten about. I have so many stacks and files I need to go through. I would also like to read through all my notes from past workshops. You never know when some little tidbit is going to click in.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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It did give me an uncomfortable feeling of disconnect, Cynthia. I’m always hoping for some brilliantly written bit from the past to pop up. Writers are dreamers. 😉
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