I almost stopped being a writer a few years back.
Through a series of accidents and incidents, I lost a great deal of what I'd written due to, of all things, hardware failure and a healthy dose of human error. It's the story I tell my students about why they should back up everything. I should have known better, of course, but what it really boiled down to is a heartbreaking incident that nearly made me set aside my metaphorical pen for good. The very thought of trying to refill the annals of my work (whether or not it was good work is largely beside the point) made my heart ache. A keen sense of loss that is hard to explain. But, this is not the story of that heartache...just the unintended positives that I never would have expected.
I'll use an incident or two to explain....
My dissertation was one of the things that was lost -- not that I don't have numerous hard copies, but the very thought of trying to turn that back into digital format made my fingers hurt. Over 200 pages. I felt exultation when I completed it and defended it, but that did not mean I wanted to have to recreate the whole thing so I could archive it digitally. I would never be able to transcribe my 30-year-old writing without my 37-year-old self editing and changing it. So, I had to make do with the drafts and cobbled together chapters that I had saved, for some reason, somewhere else. Fast forward a few years to a September afternoon of helping my brother move and I happened to mention that I wished I knew what had happened to the mini-disks I had with my dissertation on them (those, too, had vanished). Imagine my joy when my brother casually mentioned that he had one of them. There it was...a tiny silver disk with the culmination of 12 and a half years of college and countless late nights and desperate moments in neat, compact, preservable form. It was like trying on a favorite sweater and finding it still fit. Or pulling up the couch cushions and seeing that missing earring. Joy.
More recently, over dinner, I was telling my parents about the "Bones in the Dirt" story I posted a few blogs ago and how my sister-in-law told me I needed to write more of it because she was hooked. As I was talking about how I wasn't sure where I was going with the story next, my husband said something that reawakened the pangs of loss again. He reminded me of a story that I have never truly forgotten since when I wrote it and then read to him early on in our relationship. It was a good story, which is not something I am often comfortable saying (I dislike most of what I write most of the time). Though, at this point, I'm honestly not sure if I think what I wrote is good (I remember little of it) or I simply like where the story came from. It was inspired by a barn over in Pittsford. Every time they put a "For Sale" sign on it, someone would spray paint 'Leave it Alone' on it. My imagination took that and ran with it -- loving the mystery of it all. Eventually it did sell and was put on the register of historic places and thus, I'm sure, the vandal was appeased. The story I wrote started with the sale and the vandal and went from there. Like "Bones in the Dirt," however, it was unfinished.
When I read it to my husband years ago, I seem to recall him actually getting frustrated because the story was incomplete and he wanted to know what happened. He reiterated this at dinner the other night and I found myself amazed that he had remembered it and harbored that frustration over so many years. I began wondering if, somehow, I still had the story somewhere. I dared hope. That level of emotional investment from an outside was worth exploring, I thought. So, the next evening we looked and looked, but to no avail -- this was before Gmail, before the cloud, before I backed things up. As far as I could tell, the story was gone.
And I missed it. I wasn't sure if I could recreate it.
Then, on a whim, I emailed a friend to whom I had been in the habit of sending things I had written. His first reply was disheartening. It doesn't sound familiar. My heart sank and I sighed that deep sigh of resignation. It was that moment when the heart knows that all hope is gone. I wondered if I could recreate it. I wondered....and then I got a second email....
"It wasn't a building that had aged well, standing stately and tall as the years wrapped it in coats of age. It was merely a barn with barely the strength to stand and it looked out over one of the busiest roads in Glenville..."
That was the first line. He found the hard copy and typed in just that first line. At this moment I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail. My old friend. That line of email was like getting a phone call from someone whom I thought had died. It is such a powerful feeling and one that has been repeated from time to time over the years as things I had stowed away somewhere made their presence known again. As the lost was found. I may never find it all, but I love those moments when something is rediscovered. If I could go back and save it all, I would in a heartbeat, but since I cannot, I will take these moments of joy with gratitude and joy. And, perhaps more importantly, I will keep picking up that metaphorical pen and welcoming the Muse when she comes.
This writer has more to say, and will not let the lost words silence those not yet spoken...
-T
Hurray! :-D
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