The Unchosen Ones

     I wonder how many other writers will be able to relate to this...You're sitting at your laptop working on your story and ideas are flowing; you almost can't type as fast as the words are coming to you. But then it happens ....It is something that is so maddeningly simple, yet it is enough to bring your flow to a screeching halt.  You have two different phrases or sentences in mind that will both work perfectly in a line of your story and you just can't decide which one to use. I have spent many hours deciding over this, knowing that the reader would more than likely skim right over the sentence and would not be affected any differently had I chose the other sentence instead. Yet you are so proud of both of these well-phrased sentences that you don't want to let one of them go, but you have to because you can only choose one. I almost mourn for the sentence that will not be chosen, and I will even go so far as to keep it at the bottom of my working manuscript in hopes that I will be able to find a place for it somewhere else in the story.

     Assuming that other writers in the past have dealt with this same situation, imagine if we could read some of the great works of literature with all the sentences that weren't chosen put in place of those that were. It is very likely that they would be equally great works, but just told with different words. Almost like if someone were to ask you which of your children do you love the most, and you respond that you love them all the same but for their own unique reasons.

     It has been said that, "God dwells in the details," and so if there is a creator of the universe, he/she undoubtedly has run into this problem too. "Do I make a flamingo pink or yellow? "Should a mouse be this big or a little bigger? What if I put the colors in the rainbow in a different order? It would still be beautiful, just in a different way." As writers, we create new worlds and beings with our words, and it is understandable that we may labor over which words to use to best describe and convey our creations to our readers. And so I write this blog in honor of those words, phrases and sentences that were not chosen, but are worthy and may someday be called upon in another story at another time.