Is Any Writing Wasted?

Anyone who writes, whether they’ve been doing it for years or just starting, wonders what will happen to their outtakes. Some days, you’re working through a character, some backstory, a plot line, and you realize that you just spent four cups of tea fueling something that didn’t work. You put those idea scraps away, hoping for a better day.

Later, you revisit them. Something you wrote didn’t work last month, but now it fits into something you’re working on. Usually, it’s because the world has changed, or you have. “There is a bit of this that will work, you tell yourself,” and likely you will be right. There is a character, a mood, a place, or even a skillset that can be revived.

Here’s an example. Once upon a time in New York, I wrote and produced plays. After I moved away to California, it didn’t seem likely that I would ever write or produce a play again. I was heavily involved with screenplays, teleplays, documentary scripts, and writing the evening news. Then, a couple of decades later, something called podcasting showed up. I realized I could take my playwriting skills and put them to work in a podcast. I could write fiction for actors, as I used to do with plays, and get it in front of many people, possibly more than I ever did before. So I did.

I broke off a piece of a novel I was writing (it’s a metaphor; didn’t actually break anything) and turned in into a 10-episode audio drama. It felt good, so I did it again, correcting my earlier mistakes by making the episodes shorter and less expensive to produce, with a…