My great-grandmother wrote a 472-page manuscript about a family struggling on a farm in southeast Colorado during the Dust Bowl. She called it fiction.
From what my grandmother (her daughter) said, it was all true. The only fiction about it was that the names of the people were changed.
I was gifted her manuscript, The Trial of the Innocent, five years ago. I felt so lucky to have such a detailed history of this struggle my family endured right at my fingertips.
I thought I needed to bring the story back to life, so I wrote a truly terrible first draft of a novel I titled The Forgotten Manuscript.
My grandma, mom, dad, sister, and husband read it and gave feedback.
I started grad school (for public policy not an MFA) with the intention of editing a page a day. That lasted a week.
I put my manuscript on a high shelf in my coat closet where it was abandoned while I was writing my master’s thesis about preventing depression and suicide in middle school students and other policy papers about immigration or fracking or housing for older adults.
Of course I didn’t mean to prophecy my novel to abandon by naming it The Forgotten Manuscript. The more accurate title for it now is actually The Neglected Manuscript I Will Always Feel Guilty about not Having Published before my Grandma Died.
So although I can’t turn back time and make that a reality, I’m working on it again.
That blurry photo of sticky notes is my updated outline. I’m waking up even earlier to write before work. I’m writing on the weekend. I will finish it.
staying curious 