by Chris McMahon
One of the great things about being a writer is getting a sense of your own improvement. You get better at the craft, better at pulling stories together, more confident in completing work, and accumulate a great ‘tool box’ along the way of tricks and techniques.
I think most writers have experienced an unfortunate downside to this increase in facility – you become increasingly picky about what you will read. Books that would have been great fodder for a lazy afternoon suddenly elicit groan after groan until they end up denting the plaster at the other side of the room. Teeth are gnashed, and delicate fingers curled into fists as the latest best-seller is dissected by the unflinching eye.
The good thing is there is always great new work coming out, and excellent writers that just keep getting better.
The hard thing is when you look back at your own work. If it is unpublished, then you face the hard choice of binning it, or bringing it up to your current standard. I personally hate to let any piece of work die. I also like to keep comfortable old clothes that really should go by way of the charity bin, and given a chance would accumulate all sorts of ‘useful’ things that to the casual eye would variously be described as junk.
Updating old work is tough. Even if you can bring up the craft standard – correcting things like PoV, word choice, smoothing the prose etc – it will always inherit something of its rough origins. In fact you stand a good chance of removing its only redeeming feature – the raw passion – and leaving a bland story behind.
For old unpublished work, at least the choice is there. Do you let your older stories fade into the woodwork, or do you try to resurrect them?
But what do you do when you look at older published work? Do you flinch, or smile?
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “The Old Stuff”
Chris, I think what is really hard is looking at a trilogy you wrote 6 – 7 years ago, then started to rewrite 3 years ago and stopped halfway through. Then trying to pull the whole thing together.
Gaaaaaaah!
Let me guess – your trying to do this right now:)
The good thing is once you have readers hooked they tend to be pretty forgiving – I hope so anyway!
It isn’t only authors who picky with their reading as they get older and wiser(?). There are a number of books I have picked up looking for a nostalgia trip, only to put them down asking myself how I could have liked them in the first place.
On the question of rewriting material, have to say I don’t like it. I love being able to look through an authors bibliography and see where they started and how they have grown as writers. This may seem a bit over the top, but I think the whole idea is a bit 1984ish, re-writing your history so it can seem it never happened. Given that thoughJoe Konrath has an interesting idea of the future of the book which could incorporate changing or adding to older works
For now I know I am going to have to look after my copy of Raymond Feist’s Magician since there is no way I am ever going to pick up his “new and improved” version.
Hi, Brendan. That makes me feel really good! I guess if people like your stories, and your style, they will love the old stuff as well as the newer work for the same reasons and in different ways.
I only ever had one copy of Magician – I think its the old one. From memory I think the new one adds material at the beginning? Or has he actually rewritten it? I don’t think its fair to do that to things in print. In my mind that makes them ‘locked in’.
I tend to both laugh and cringe. I was, umm, not cautious and careful about my first efforts. Space Aliens, werewolves and dragon shapshifting British spies in the same book? No problemo, Dude.
Hi, Pam. That is one thing the early stuff has – raw passion and unconstrained stories. Its a shame to lose that really. It’s made me realise that I forgot to see and remember the things I really loved at the time that I wrote that, and what drove it. Thanks,
And I should add, peppered with notes on what I needed to research. I am tempted to do so, and find out if it is publishable.
Ah ha! So do you have a shed or cupboard filled with things you can’t bear to throw away?:)