I think I threw away a piece of writing and cannot get it back.

This is going to be a lesson for myself and anyone else who reads this. DO NOT throw away any of your writing. Just don’t do it. It will come back and bite you in the ass.

In today’s world of terabyte hard drives, there is no reason to ever delete a piece of writing. From now on, that is my mantra. Even if it’s on paper, that’s what they make file cabinets for, right?

See, this little thing I wrote, it sucked. Badly. So badly that I thought I would never ever use it and so I trashed it, emptied the trash can, and hoped I’d never hear from it again.

Now, months later, I realized that it is a missing piece in the puzzle of the story I’m going to start writing. now it is gone forever.

Yes, I remember what happened, in general, so the idea is still there. Yes, in rewriting it, it will inevitably come out better than it did the first time, now that I know what it’s going to be used for.

I’m just frustrated as it’s really background material and I don’t want to take the time to write it over again. I have a very difficult time writing something twice. It just doesn’t want to come back out of my brain a second time.

So now I have this naggling little itch at the back of my brain. There is a slim, slim chance that it’s somewhere lost on my hard drive or on some bit of paper somewhere in my files (I can’t clearly remember anymore if it was typed or hand-written), but I have to let it go.

So, I release you, bit of writing! I let you go, may you come back to me again sometime soon. I will be here, building on your foundation while I await your return.