Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Anyone else experiencing this situation?

My computer charger picked today of all days to snap in two, so the partial I was suppose to send out today got delayed (as my own laptop can't turn on until my rush-delivery charger shows up tomorrow). Instead, I read through my old notebooks of past projects, and ended up picking up project from 3 years ago to work on later.

What's the oldest project you've decided to pick up again

I found a short story in a notebook from about ten years ago, tore the end off it and rewrote that part, then mailed it out. It sold to the second market I sent it to :)

That's why I keep everything, including notebooks full of scribbled down lines and ideas. You never know when you might find something that sparks off a really good or fun project :)

BlancheKing wrote:What's the oldest project you've decided to pick up again

Nineteen years. I completed the first draft for my current WIP in '91 and started the second draft last fall. I did type the longhand first draft into the computer in '05.

It had been percolating in the back of my mind over all those years, until I gained the time and the writing chops to rework it.

I came up with the plot and characters for my current WIP over six years ago. Back then I wrote down the entire idea and even a few scenes, but something was a little off; I couldn't figure out what it was, but something wasn't quite right. I thought about it off and on for years, occasionally writing another random scene, but it still wasn't quite clicking. In January (this year) a totally random occurrence made everything fall into place. I started writing ("like a woman possessed", according to my best friend) and had most of the first draft done within four months. Well, technically six years and four months---LOL. Now I'm doing revisions and filling in little bits that are missing here or there. I always liked this story, it just took all that time for me to see it with enough clarity to really run with it.

I am now writing a WIP that I came up with in the 9th grade. That would be six years from the very first glimmer of an idea to actually beginning to write it. I don't know why, I just had this huge urge to write it so I fixed all the problems I saw with it and started writing. So far so good. There was also a novella/short novel I wrote when I was ten that I would like to rework at some point. That idea is ten years old. And by the time I actually get to it...well, who knows how old it will be.