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So, every once in a while a friend will toss out a great anecdote, or character, or fully formed story, with the caveat, “Go ahead and use this, because for X reason, I never will.” That’s one kind of leftover I really love, the wisp of an idea with which you can play around, experiment, test out your own bits and pieces and see if they play nice.
One big type of literary leftover are posthumously published works by departed writers. The manuscript in the drawer, partially finished, with enough flesh on the bones to be provocative, evocative, worth reading. Max Brod famously ignored Kafka’s wishes that his unpublished writings be destroyed. Dickens had The Mystery of Edwin Drood, only six of the planned twelve installments had been published when he died. I know there are living writers out there who have fair use stories and fragments on their sites – however the Tryptophan has clouded my mind – and I can’t think of them. Do you know of leftovers on the internet? Perhaps you have some of your own to offer up to the group.
