Blog-Garage Sale – A Call For Duds!

Look at all this great stuff! I wonder if I can get the smell of Indian food out of this cool crock pot. (Image from jobsallover.com)

I think most bloggers will tell you, we have lots of junk stored in our mental garages, or as WordPress likes to call them our “Draft Files”.

I’ll have a momentary spark of inspiration about a potential topic, scribble down a sentence or two, give it a title, then hit “Save Draft”.  Sometimes it’s the title itself, sometimes it’s the idea, but something in there merits my hitting the save button.  Subsequent revisits to the draft do not shed much light on why I ever thought that dog of a topic ever had any value.  So it sits in the draft file collecting dust like a singing big-mouth bass mounted on a plaque.

It’s time for a blog-garage sale.  Next Saturday morning, 7/14 around 8:00 AM Eastern time, I’ll put five of my drafts out on tables in the driveway known as my blog, in hopes that  someone will take these clunkers.  Shoppers will be able to get them for a fraction of what I paid (which was nothing), and save me the trouble of tripping over that pile of ideas on the floor by the back door.

The drafts, just like their snooty over-achiever cousins, the finished posts, are bargain priced at zero dollars.  Still, in my garage-sale state of mind, I just can’t bring myself to just throw the drafts in the trash.  If I can’t find someone to take these off my hands, I’m just going to have to throw these things out, along with this broken beach umbrella and that crappy old bureau that my grandmother said was an “original Chippendale” – Come on Nanny, I’m pretty sure didn’t have male strippers back in the olden days.

Everyone knows that the more people’s junk treasures there are at one of these sales, the more carloads of strange people will show up and browse.  Therefore, I encourage my fellow bloggers to bring out your duds.  Pick out a few lame ideas from your own drafts file and add them to the shady driveway also known as the comments section of this post, or email them to me at dlovett54@gmail.com.  I’ll post them all in next Saturday’s Blog Garage Sale post.  Once they’re on the comments section or in the post, they’re fair game for anyone who’d like them.  If you email them, I’ll be able to post them without attaching your name if you’re that embarrassed by them.  Think fondly of me as you hit the delete button beneath the draft, ridding yourself of those once sparkling ideas which are just depressing to look at now.

As for you non-blog writers, enjoy this creepy glimpse into the raw creative process of your writing heroes.  Be warned though – Seeing these turds before they’ve been honed and polished will undoubtedly take some of the magic away from your reading experiences in the future – kind of like seeing Johnnie Depp without his elevator shoes and make-up.

The first rule of thumb at blog-garage sales is not to wonder whether someone has some sort of mental disorder -“idea hoarding syndrome” or “bad taste” are two of the maladies which often spring to mind.  Just glance at the junk on the tables, and if nothing suits you, nod and smile then move along.  Be sure to check back later, I’m hoping more people show up and bring their garbage treasured ideas.

One last request.  In the event that you trash-pick one of the draft ideas from here and later write a post with it, let me know about it.  I’ll try to let folks know via my blog.  Who knows, you might end up with a Pulitzer, or at the very least, maybe snagging a few more readers.