On Twitter, essayist Paul Crenshaw asks:
What’s the collective noun for all your unpublished pieces, the detritus and debris from writing, the cast-offs and castaways languishing on their little file of an island?
One of the team members at Pen & Anvil -- and why DO so many people have access to our social media account? -- pinged my handle in a reply, taking the view, I suppose, that this is the sort of question I'd have fun in answering. They were right! Here is my reply:
I resent that you think I think about this a lot. Though, I do. Viz: Jeofails. Compost. Hellboxlings. Bad jokes. Benthic snow. Sequestra. Woundikins. Pendlings. Beneficiaries of no one's orphanotrophism. Dead squibs. Pulp cabinet. Diple heap. Hobobooks. Ye olde parapraxial hoard.
Of course I think about this a lot. Most of my writings are stillborn. My rate of return on personal poetry submissions is.... not a number I wish to quote here. Those writings that do survive the rigors and wrenchings of gestation and birth most often turn out to be not suited for life. Those, I allow to wither and perish -- sports, errors of the lineage. They would only be rejected by editors, rightly so. Kill your darlings, friends, and weep not for unadopted children. Writing is a brutal art.
Do check out all the replies in Crenshaw's original thread -- some really lovely metaphors and phrasings are on display!
