Letting Go and Moving the Work

I find that I'm writing a lot of stuff that doesn't end up where I thought it would. I think I'm writing one plot line but then things go sideways and I find it isn't the direction I need or the scene I need. I keep the unusable bits because, eventually, I find places to use them, or ways to expand them out and make something else.

This is progress for me. I've had a lot of trouble in the past getting out of my own way where my writing was concerned. When it stalled, I stalled. When I couldn't write my way out of a scene, I would just get frustrated and stop. But recently I've been better about just chopping out the sections that don't work and doing something else with them later.

I'm basically applying the same logic to writing that I apply to knitting. You know, how yarn that should have been in some beautiful elaborate project ends up being part of another ten-stitch blanket.