Writing Rubbish

Right after I quit my teaching job three years ago, I began work on a play based on my great-great grandfather’s, W.P. Duckett’s, memoir of settling Texas.

But the first several months of writing it produced pure rubbish. I’m not being modest or wanting you to tell me, “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.” Because it was. In fact, several versions of it existed before it was anything even worth mentioning.

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have a good idea or that I am not a good writer. To be honest, there really wasn’t a problem. I just had to learn about the process. I don’t really consider myself a pro, so I don’t offer a lot of pro tips, but I do have this one: The writing process involves So. Much. Rubbish.

I have written hundreds of rubbish pages. It was through writing all that rubbish that I found the truth. I found my play. Through all of my wandering and meandering through that memoir trying to find the story and the right way to tell it, I ran into Eliza, W.P.’s wife, my great-great-grandmother. It was as if while I wrote scene after scene of their travels out west, she grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “I’m your story.” And the good stuff poured out from there (with several rubbish writing days in between).

Over the last few days, I’ve read over the chapters that I’ve rewritten in the second draft of my current project-my middle grade novel, and I just think…this book sucks. And I wish I could say that I immediately recognized that voice. It was the same one who visited me while writing my first play. And my second…and my….” You get the point. I didn’t recognize it at first, though. Instead, I gave into the voice for a bit and thought, “maybe I’m just really bad at this.”

I mean, the first draft was difficult. Just getting my idea down in some kind of comprehensible way was such a huge feat, but the second draft has to be better than that, right? I actually have to write something good at some point and not just keep completing rubbish chapter after rubbish chapter.

It’s totally terrifying. Wouldn’t it just be better to get a job at Starbucks and pour coffee for people everyday? It would bring people a lot of happiness, and I think I’d be really, easily good at it.

But no. Writing Abigail means more to me than that. Just like Writing Eliza did. Writing Abigail is a story that is running through the cobblestone streets of my brain, sprinting through the portals of my fingertips to get out. I couldn’t stop writing it if I wanted to.

I’m taking heart because that first play I wrote after quitting my job is getting published next month! Eliza’s story has taken a long, meandering, painful, journey that I can only hope keeps going and finds its way into someone’s heart who needs to experience it. Just like Abigail’s will.

So, for now, I’m gonna keep my butt in the seat and keep writing the rubbish. Abigail will find her way out of it somehow. One barefoot step on the cobblestones at a time.

P.S. If you’d like to order a copy of my play, Gone But Not Forgotten, just click here. Scripts are being pre-sold. (Eek!)