Crumbs

The process of moving on is never as decisive and quick as slamming a door or tearing a band aid. It’s slow and unplanned, like wandering into a forest without a pocketful of crumbs. It is the act of not looking back until it’s too late.

...from the "Scraps of" document on my desktop.

I've been moving between a short story revision and the novel in progress. One always seems easier than the other, and I try to be flexible, to work where I'm inspired. But then there are the crumbs that seem to fall between both worlds and I'm left loving a turn of phrase, a sentence or a paragraph, that doesn't yet have a page to exist on or a story in which it fits.

The challenge then becomes to not let the scrap guide the story, but to let the story evolve as it should, and to be willing to kill our darlings as they lie. Or, (as is more often the case for me) to secretly hope that though they haven't yet found a place on the piece at hand, that their time will come.