Twelve shatterproof ornaments. That’s what the clear plastic box said. I found eleven on the tree after Christmas. It’s an artificial tree. Not too many hidey places for an inanimate sparkly plastic ball on a string. And yet, I gave up and moved on to try and find the eight “feather angels”. There were only six of these left. One became the tortured play thing of the cat and the other was wrapped as an emergency gift for an ornament exchange. All found and accounted for. The angels went to sleep for their annual rest in the attic.

The tree came down one section at a time, branches collapsed, bent back like claws to the green metal trunk. Every year I think I’ve done it wrong, that the pieces can’t possible fit back into the box and yet they do. Every year when I take it out again I think, it’s got to be destroyed for the compression wraps I put around its fake snow covered boughs.

I lovingly remove each section, dreams of sugar plums dancing in my head. It’s the opening of the holiday season, there’s no complaint of dust releasing in the air or of the rash I get on my arms from reshaping, opening each branch, bending each twig to look lifelike as though they are reaching for the sun. And there it is, number twelve, sparkling in all its white plastic ornament glory. How did that happen?

I bet it’s happened to you. You’ve lost ornaments in a Christmas tree, maybe not for a whole season (I may have embellished on the true story). Maybe not an ornament on a tree, how about a phone in the house? A bag of chips you put down on the couch? A book you were just reading? Lost but then someone else (usually a gleeful other human living with you) finds whatever it is in a snap. Or you find it, like an ornament on the tree, hanging peacefully on that inner branch you thought was so mysteriously beautiful reflecting light like a precious snowflake. It was always there, didn’t move, didn’t get sucked into the Twilight Zone and spit back out to annoy you.

It kind of reminds me how it feels when I re-read a first draft, especially a novel’s beginning. My story beginning is always a struggle and then it is not. I edit and smile and laugh, “I’ve got it. I’ve finally got it!”. Until the next time I read it and press ‘select all’ and then ‘delete’. It’s like that missing ornament. It’s there somewhere but it alludes me. That’s the pain of writing, not seeing it the first time, only finding it after a year of storage or worse when it’s submitted for feedback.

Has it happened to you? Someone makes a simple comment, “you’ve started this with a lot of back story, why not begin as soon as…” And there it is, so obvious. How did my internal editor miss that? Alas, I have no magic cure for this except to keep trying. Don’t give up. Keep hunting for the best way to roll a scene. It’s there, for sure, just like the ornament, the keys, the phone, the bag of chips. It may take a year, it may mean taking a different car, missing a few texts, eating crushed chips (yes, they were under the seat cushion), but finding what you’re missing is your destiny. Onward authors!