What do you have hiding in your drawers?

Catchy title, don't you think? I've been helping Speck prune the forum, which is a long and tedious task. Often times as I was going through these older topics I thought about what great information these threads still contained. And this all got me to thinking about my writing.

Upstairs, in my hope chest is an entire envelope of stories and poems I wrote as a teenager. While my vanity won't allow me to share with you how old they are, I can tell you that it has been well over a decade since I last looked at them. I distinctly remember a poem I wrote, titled The Sights and Sounds that Fill the Night. I can even visualize myself writing it late one evening as I gazed out over the street from the window of the three-room apartment our neighbor lived in.

I can also recall the two stories I wrote after my mother's death from cancer, each of which amazingly had a female protaganist who's mother was dying of cancer. And then there was the Scooby Doo type mystery I penned when that show was still on the air.

But what use are these stories now? Well, not only do they serve to remind me of the things that were important to me when I was that young; they could also spark a new story idea that I could submit for publication. Maybe I might find one that still seems pretty darn good and revise it and mail it out. And since I would love to write for the young adult market, this might just give me a glimpse into how to speak to young people without talking down to them.

How many manuscripts do you have tucked away? One, five, ten...just sitting around collecting dust when they could be making you money. Maybe it's time you pulled open the manuscript drawer to see what you have hiding in there.

Who knows, it might be the makings of the Great American Novel.

Cheryl