All the Stories You’ve Never Told Aren’t Dead. They’re Your Secret Weapon

And they live inside you

Photo by Reuben Juarez on

I have dozens if not hundreds of untold stories. Short stories. Fanfiction. Articles. My first novel.

I bet you have untold stories, too.

They’re untold either because you tried to get them out but couldn’t, or they’re unfinished. Looking back, they seem like a waste of time. There was no point in creating them and writing them because no one read them.

Wrong.

These stories are your superpower. Exactly because they’re buried. They have the power to elevate your writing career if you know how to use them.

You should recycle stories

Untold stories weren’t read by anyone but you. Maybe because they didn’t take off, or maybe because you never actually wrote them.

That’s why they’re a second chance.

I tried getting my first novel traditionally published for eight months. I queried literary agents — more than sixty of them. I submitted my manuscript to writing contests.

I tried everything I could think of, yet it didn’t take off. My first novel was never published. But it was the start of my next novel. I took elements, characters, and even…