Do all 'bad' ideas really belong in the trash?

Don't throw away your "bad" writing ... yet.

One day during my junior year of college, I went to the computer lab, found a Mac to use, fired up Microsoft Word and tried to compose a contest-winning story. I had no plot or characters, just hope all that would come to me if I started typing.

I started with a woman looking out her front door and seeing a man get out of a car and head in her direction. I described the man — greasy hair, long coat, I don't remember what else. He frightens the woman, who never fully opens the door as he comes up to it. I added dialogue to show he wanted her to let him in without stating his purpose. I mean, I didn't even know what his purpose was yet. It would come to me, right?

Because the woman finds him creepy, she tells him to be on his way and starts to shut the door. And then I ran out of steam. There is no story if the door closes, right? What else could happen? Where do I go with this? Why is he here? After several minutes of sitting there with my fingers hovering above the keyboard, I gave up. I wrote that the man hurls his foot forward to stop the door from closing and says, "But lady, our vacuums sell themselves."

Discouraged and deflated, I printed off my "story," which didn't even fill a page, and left the computer lab. I dished out a lot of self-abuse on the way back to my dorm. Who was I kidding? I have no creativity. I can't write a short story, let alone one good enough to win a contest.

Eventually, the story became part of the stack of term papers, blue books and syllabi that I accumulated during the remainder of my higher education.

Years later, as I sat on my bedroom floor sorted through a box of my college memorabilia, trying to decide what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to toss, I came across that story again.

You know what? I liked it ... just like it was. The contrast between the creep factor and silly ending, in my opinion, worked well as flash fiction. I was astonished how much better I thought it was without the pressure I'd put on myself that day in the computer lab.

One day, maybe a year or so after that, I went to find it because I wanted to get my boyfriend (now husband's) opinion on it, and I couldn't find it. Maybe as I was sorting through that stack of college stuff, I'd meant to put it in a "keep" pile but instead tossed it. Or maybe I tossed it on purpose, second-guessing myself again.

But it got me to thinking, how often have I tossed writing I didn't like at the time, telling myself it was crap? Perhaps if I had put them away in a drawer for a week, a month, a year or so, I would've come back to them and found they had more value than I realized.

Or maybe I would've thought they were even worse.

Have you ever hated something you wrote but later liked it after putting it away for a while? Feel free to share in the comments below.