Have you ever found an unfinished piece of writing--one you did weeks, months or even years before--and said to yourself, "Did I write this? I didn't know I could write this well!" That happened to me recently, when I came across an old story excerpt that seemed too good to have come from me.

To get around the paralysis caused by the dreaded blank page, I'll start a story in the middle, often at the most dramatic point. Fortunately, in the magical-transformation subgenre of TG fiction, a perfect dramatic point exists in the "transformation scene"--the first time Our Hero becomes Our Heroine.

One afternoon, while attempting to clear space on my computer, I happened upon a piece of writing lurking in a dark sub-sub-sub-folder. Namely, what you see below:

In a stretch of time both instantaneous and forever, the tingling sensation--which had begun as a wave at the top of his head, soon washed over his shoulders and torso, spilling over to his legs, his ankles, his feet, his toes.He was melting--no, he was smaller. Lighter. Almost as if three-quarters of his body mass vaporized in an instant, like a droplet of water hitting a hot frying pan. Checking for physical clues, Jake found he could see nothing, save a mass of gray. He resolved to search when the haze cleared from his eyes.

"Annabelle D'Amboise!"

A woman's voice. Stern. Screeching, like an old out of tune violin. And angry. At him? What had he done? No, she wanted "Annabelle", whoever she was, but as far as he knew, only he and this woman occupied this strange netherworld. Her footsteps--nervous, quick--echoed through some point in space, but whether it was in front of, behind, or even on top of him, he had no way of knowing.

"Annabelle! Do NOT make me call you again, girl!"

The grayness coalesced to reveal him seated at a piano, the very same piano he had in his music shop, only newer, brighter, as if a restorer lovingly rebuilt it from the inside out. The sheet music, its pencil scrawls intact, still occupied its slot on the music stand, but even it was newer, less yellowed. It's as if she bought the paper yesterday...

But of all the odd things Jake had seen since his vision returned, nothing quite prepared him for the sight of his hands. No, not his--or were they? He couldn't be sure of anything in this Alice-In-Wonderland place. When he played the final chord of the child's piece, he remembered, he had to stretch his fingers more than he was accustomed. Now he knew why.

He screamed, in a voice not his own.

Before he could fully process who, what, where, or when he was (time travel? Get real, Jake!) his head snapped back. Pain exploded through his scalp. Someone, or something, yanked at his hair, and it had a strong grip.

"Annabelle, you lazy girl! It's past teatime, and here you are! Playing that piano, and playing that wretched colored music! Both of which you were expressly told not to do!!"

Lovely--so this is Screechy Violin Lady....

A squeal of pain leapt from his throat. Was that sound his? The pain certainly was.

Perhaps some explanation is required. Some years ago, I came up with the idea for a children's story called "Annabelle's Rag," about a young girl in 1911 who happens to be a budding ragtime composer. It was partly based, I admit, on the real-life story of a little girl's friendship with Mark Twain in his declining years. I thought, rather than Twain, why can't she carry on a regular correspondence with Scott Joplin?

I was still a frequent visitor to Fictionmania at that time, and soon the possibilities of such a plot as part of a TG story for the site became apparent.

Suppose the protagonist started out as a male in the present day?

Which left, of course, the problem of how to get our present-day protagonist back to the past in the form of a young girl. I found the solution in the most unlikely of places--a segment of the short-lived 1980s version of "The Twilight Zone." My memory of the plot is hazy, so if you've seen it, forgive me if I get some of the details wrong.

In it, a young prison inmate is assigned to assist an older inmate in cleaning the prison's storeroom. The older man had been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit for some fifty (sixty would make more sense) years or so. He over the decades had sworn revenge on the man who framed him.

While cleaning, the younger inmate comes across a battered old piano, which the older inmate says looks just like one he'd seen in a Chicago speakeasy back in the twenties. The younger man, a musician, is strangely drawn to it. Later, he decides to see if it can still play, and begins playing the first piece of sheet music he finds, the "Maple Leaf Rag."

As he plays, the background starts to change around him, and he soon finds himself in a city park in 1899, in period clothing, playing the rag as a member of a band. The minute he stops playing, he returns to the prison and the present.

He then plays a Gershwin piece from the twenties, and finds himself in the same Chicago speakeasy the older inmate spoke of--and encounters the hood actually responsible for the crime.

The minute I recalled that story, I knew immediately how to get my protagonist back in time.

He could be a middle-aged music store owner in a depressed neighborhood, facing bankruptcy and contemplating suicide. Until, that is, a strange woman visits him, offering him an old piano and yellowed sheet music. It turns out to be a treasure trove of Scott Joplin pieces long thought lost, along with a series of letters presumably written by Joplin to an eleven-year-old girl--one of which contained a piece of music written by her and corrected by Joplin. His despair immediately vanishes, replaced by dreams of instant wealth. Collectors would pay a fortune for this!

Out of curiosity, he sits down at the piano to play the child's piece. Rather than merely go back in time as in the Twilight Zone story, however, he becomes the composer of the music he plays--and we're off and running.

He only spends a short time in the past before he returns to the present as his old self, and each trip to the past is a little bit longer. He's there for a reason--but what?

If I decide to continue this story, a change in title is perhaps called for--I'm thinking, "Annabelle's Slow Drag." I'd rather avoid the inevitable juvenile menstruation jokes a title like "Annabelle's Rag" might evoke. (A slow drag, incidentally, is the term for a slow ragtime piece.)

I put it aside, however, because of the overwhelming amount of research involved. And frankly, in my befuddled state these last few months, I was hardly in any shape to develop it further. I think, too, I put it aside because I didn't consider it original enough--I'd borrowed from too many other elements.

I don't know why it is that I can write great scenes, but when confronted with an actual plot, I fall apart. Perhaps I'm better suited to drabbles.