Repurpose Your Darlings

A friend of mine’s mother passed away. She was a formidable woman, involved in charities, had a lucrative career, and was an asset to the community. I was surprised to learn that the family was responsible for not only writing but paying for the placement of the obituary. I don’t know exactly why I found this shocking. Maybe it was the considerable amount of money or the arduous task of trying to remember all the things she had done. But like so many things these days, if you want something done you have to do it yourselves.

I wrote a novel called Like Matter. There was this section of the book where our hero becomes obsessed with obituaries and death notices. It was fun to write but I don’t think it did any service to the book, so I had to “kill my darlings.” Until now. Now I can put them here and you can see if they’re any good. 

“Hanna Bernstein was a competitive cook by trade. She had been a finalist in the Pillsbury bake-off eight times, more than any other non-winner.  (She was known as the Susan Lucci of the Pillsbury bake-off.)  Hanna idolized Paula Wolfert, the food writer and cookbook author, who had been widely criticized for her snobbish demands for the use of hard-to-find ingredients.  Hanna’s determination to follow the Wolfert ideals of using largely esoteric ingredients may have been a factor in her never having won Pillsbury’s million-dollar prize.  When she passed away at age 57, she was in the middle of completing her first book, Dog-Eat-Dog: A Guide to Competitive Cooking. Her close friends and fellow competitors, Sheila and John Zuck, plan on finishing the book, provided that they can get permission from Ms. Bernstein’s estate.

Hanna had lived alone since her husband Frank passed away four years ago from a heart attack. Her grown son Isaac is in the Army.  When not competing, she relaxed by watching QVC (not HSN!).  Her favorite host was Leah Williams, whose motto was, “Go for your dreams because it can happen.”  But all the hosts felt like friends.  Hanna’s phone calls had been on the air thirty-six times. She knew the operators by name.  

Hanna had a stroke and passed away in her home. Her body was found almost two weeks later when the UPS man, concerned about the piling up of packages, phoned 911.”

My point is, if you want to be a writer, you have to write. It’s all good. The best person to plagiarize from is you. So, write, reread, and recreate.