Hidden Gems, by Eleri Grace

Our prompt this month asks us to consider the value in our older and/or unpublished writing. Are there hidden gems lurking in your hard drive (or even perhaps housed on diskettes!) or scribbles on old notepads? With published writing under your belt, could you rework what you earlier discarded or filed away as worthless? 

For me, the answer probably is no, but mostly because my earlier writing efforts don't align with my current genre and branding as a WWII historical author. Actually, that's not entirely accurate -- probably somewhere I have some notes and preliminary thoughts for a time travel YA novel that used Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms as a portal to the past. I think I got that idea on one of my visits to the Cabinet War Rooms, noting not only how they've been preserved so precisely as they were in 1945 but also how many hidden nooks and crannies and off-limits rooms and hallways the site has. It seems the absolute perfect place for a portal leading present-day time travelers back to wartime London! 

Churchill Cabinet War Rooms, personal photo of author (2016)

Churchill Cabinet War Rooms, personal photo of author (2016)

I got my start in creative writing with Harry Potter fan fiction. Before trying my hand at fan fiction, I had always considered myself more of a non-fiction and academic writer. I had no sense that I would ever be able to write dialogue or plot out a story or novel. While writing a long-form fan fiction piece, my entire perception changed, as I realized I had far more creativity than I'd ever imagined possible. Not only did I have creativity, but I enjoyed expressing myself in that outlet. Then I had my first child, and writing took a back seat for the next ten years. 

Some of our favorites from Mother-Daughter Book Club!

As my children grew older, I once again explored the possibility of writing fiction. At the time, I was still reading with my children regularly. I coached my daughter's competitive book-reading team in elementary school, and then we formed a mother-daughter book club that was active throughout her middle and high school years. Because so much of what we were reading in those years was YA, I initially launched my writing efforts thinking I might write middle-grade or YA novels. I joined SCBWI, attended their local conferences, and began occasionally meeting with a local friend to write for a few hours in the mornings at a coffee shop. I was writing, but I still didn't have the sense that I had found my way quite yet. 

I don't recall the impetus precisely, but at some point around 2013-2014, I got connected up with RWA and decided to give adult fiction a try. I wrote a contemporary romance and pitched it at RWA's annual conference. It got some nibbles, but I couldn't sell it to an agent or publisher. In looking at the books stacked on my nightstand one evening, it suddenly hit me that I didn't actually frequently read all that many contemporary romance novels. My TBR pile consisted of many historical fiction novels, mostly set during WWII. That got the wheels turning, and I began to explore what women did to support the war effort beyond the home front defense work. I worked out some of the roles that took women overseas, closer to the action and closer to the potential heroes. I knew even in those early days that I wasn't too interested in writing a romance where the action is centered on the home front or where the couple are separated for long stretches of time. I wanted my heroine to be in the thick of it, and I quickly become intrigued by the Red Cross Girls who served overseas all over the globe. Once I learned how much they interacted with the servicemen and how closely they operated to the front lines, the action, the danger, I was hooked. 

So while I can't envision recycling any of my earlier efforts into my current writing, it played a part in proving to me that I was creative, that I enjoyed writing fiction, and that I was capable of plotting and writing a full novel. 

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