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Time travel

davefreer
2–3 minutes

Ever picked up one of your old books, and started reading it? I did so the other day. It was a weird experience, as we’re talking of something I wrote many years back. Now, when I am editing my own work, I re-read the book 7-9 times – probably too often. Of course, I read over missing words and don’t pick up continuity errors. The scary thing is I DO find a lot, which just says how bad I am. Anyway, the end result is, by the time it is published… I don’t really want to read it again. I’m proud of it, I love it, I hope readers love it… but I don’t want to read it again, at least not for a while.

When I have ended up doing sequels, of course, that needs several re-reads, lots of note taking, to make sure I am in character, in sequence, and have the same ‘language-image’ in my head (Depending on the type of book, the target market, there is quite a difference.) But… that’s not reading for pleasure, really. It’s a studying exercise. So: when I was really struggling with the black dog… and looking for something to read to cheer me up a little, I fell into one of my own books.

That author was an optimist. And I wish I could time travel and teach him a few things. He was eerily like someone I might have known once… Sir Terry Pratchett said (I paraphrase) that his novel THE CARPET PEOPLE was written by two separate authors, both himself, but one at 17 and the other 43. I enjoyed by own book, but… well, I am tempted to re-write it – in my ample spare time.

It’s a feature of trying to make a living as an author, that you need to write a lot. That compresses the time at the end of a book before you turn it in for publication. I’d love to put my books aside for a year or two, but that’s not going to happen. I am still determined to make that a longer period, so I can see the wood for the trees, as it were.

So, tell me: Have you re-read your old work? Did you like it? Did you even recognise the author?

16 responses to “Time travel”

  1. MishaBurnett Avatar
    MishaBurnett

    I recently listened to my series of four novels while travelling for work and it was interesting. As novels, they aren’t well plotted, but there are some individual scenes in them that even I have to admit are damned good. I can see now that I wasn’t really writing novels, much less a series, I was writing a series of semi-connected stories (a format that I have since returned to more deliberately.)

    I’m never quite sure what, in an ideal world, I would do with that series, The Book Of Lost Doors. I could sit down and re-edit them, cut scenes, move things around, change some of the more egregious logical and continuity errors, maybe even condense them into a single volume. There is an overarching storyline that runs through all four books, although it is more accidental than planned.

    But I think I would end up losing a lot in the process, even if I could devote the time and energy to it. The first book was written 15+ years ago, and I’m not who I was then. I have learned a lot, grown a lot, and lost a lot. Much of the conceits that form the basis for those books are things I no longer believe.

    I’m glad I wrote those books, and I wouldn’t be the artist I am today if I hadn’t had that experience, but… I think it’s best if I leave them in the past.

    Reply
  2. Karen Myers Avatar
    Karen Myers

    All right, I’ll say it. Yes, I reread my own books, esp. my 2 long series. I spent a fun time fabulating them and learning the process, and they’re part of me. I enjoy the once-in-a-while visit/reminder. This is not to say I don’t notice the occasional opportunity to have used different words, but actually — I don’t find errors and I’m content with them. What I really wish is that I could have constructed a longer set of series entries at the time so that I could enjoy my created world more, but they are shaped as a whole to fill that space, and it’ll do. (I did leave myself room to extend if I thought it worthwhile.)

    I’ve been fabulating the first books of the new series (partly written) since I started writing them years ago, before various existential crises derailed the process. Spurred on by the knowledge of creeping brain rot (aka Alzheimers) I’m doing my best to get all the life-crises adequately resolved so that I can get that last series written to my satisfaction and out the door (more out of pride than out of profit), but it’ll be a race. Still, I get the thrill of the bedside notepad to record the bits of plot or wording that occur to me that pile up to be properly added/inserted once I get to roar down that track for real one more time. There’s such a lot of fun to be had in every writing session.

    Reply
  3. Jane Meyerhofer Avatar
    Jane Meyerhofer

    I reread my first book, and before I even got to the question of plot and the rest I had to live with way too many typos. I also had to admit to doing a bit of self-therapy. But if I hadn’t just done it and pushed it out the door I wouldn’t have kept going, trying to write. Maybe some of my family wishes that had happened… lol. Some author who is quoted a lot around here said not to look back and try to rewrite unless someone is paying you to do that.

    But if you really want to rewrite something … file off the serial numbers and go for it … as a new story. I still haven’t quite forgiven an author who, because of Kindle, was able to change the name of an object in one of her books; the tenth time I read it there was an oddity!

    Reply
    1. Frank Avatar
      Frank

      Some author who is quoted a lot around here said not to look back and try to rewrite unless someone is paying you to do that.

      Yeah, that was one of Heinlein’s rules for writing.

      Reply
  4. TXRed Avatar
    TXRed

    I went back to my PhD dissertation after writing several hundred thousand words of nonfiction and fiction. Yeeeearrrrgh! It was awful—lousy word choices, dull in places, no fun. It was also, as dissertations go, not bad at all.

    My very early fiction went in a burn barrel along time ago. (Teen goth odes to dead trees woe-is-me and so on). My published fiction makes me cringe in places, but I’m not going to rewrite it. I’m in a different mental place, and the stories are what they are.

    Reply
  5. Dan Lane Avatar
    Dan Lane

    Ye olde manuscripts, some of them are boggy stinky icky things that would make the cats yowl and cover their fuzzy ears were they even spoken aloud. Yet there are some that are good enough for this ‘n that. Dr Z has its structural issues (some load bearing chapters have enough holes they need a complete replacement methinks, and the less said about the papered over cracks in the arcs the better), but I still like it well enough.

    I still go back to some of them and want to finish and polish up a bit every now and again. When the writing comes back there will be chapters here and there. We shall see.

    Reply
  6. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    I guess I’m the odd person here probably because I had no luck getting published early on. I tried writing a “great” novel as a freshman in college. I got 60 pages in and filed it away, admitting to myself that I had to learn how to write first before attempting anything like that.

    Most of my early stuff is trashed or on illegible mimeo sheets. I only have one novel to my credit so far, so nothing but short stories (and some surviving poems) from long ago and far away. The first story I sold is far from my best, but I got a nice quote from Ray Bradbury out of it, and, after all, it was the first story I sold, so I had to include it in my anthology. There are 18 “chapters”, 14 are my stories, 2 my wife’s stories, and 2 “chapters” that are not fiction but derinitely stories. They’re actually true, though many people might find them hard to believe. (I have witnesses, and some documentary evidence :))

    Most of my old stuff, I do enjoy rereading, even some that I would never publish because they’re just not good enough.

    Reply
    1. Mary Catelli Avatar
      Mary Catelli

      Eh, took me a while to get published. Then there was a trickle of short stories, and then I finished a novel, tried a few agents, and self-pubbed.

      Reply
      1. Frank Avatar
        Frank

        I applaud your wise decision. 🙂

        Reply
  7. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    About publish old stuff or not and are you ashamed of what you once wrote, I should mention one of my favorite books, My Name Is Legion by Roger Zelazny. It’s 3 novellas with the same protagonist. The second novella was written 20 years after the first, and the last was written 20 years after the second. I highly recommend reading them to any aspiring writer. The first story was a competent thriller/mystery, the second story was an the same but with a fascinating background exploring the feasibility of communicating with dolphins. The last was his Hugo and Nebula award winning story Home Is the Hangman which has what I consider one of the best openings of all time.

    Reply
    1. "Daniel Willard" Avatar
      “Daniel Willard”

      I cannot say enough good things about Home is the Hangman, or, really, the whole collection. If you hadn’t told me that the three stories were written 20 years apart, I would never have known that from reading them. Roger Zelazny was just that good.

      Reply
  8. jaglionpress Avatar
    jaglionpress

    The first novel length thing I ever completed, twenty ish years ago, is still floating around the hard drive, three computers later. I remember the process of writing it with fond nostalgia, but found it very meh last time I tried to reread it.

    Reply
  9. Mary Catelli Avatar
    Mary Catelli

    Most of my juvenilia was longhand, and in my horrible handwriting. Also, unfinished.

    Reply
  10. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    Aside from one silly story I wrote in 5th grade, I didn’t even try fiction in high school. Instead I wrote satires of everybody at the school for my small group of friends to enjoy.

    Reply
  11. Seawriter Avatar
    Seawriter

    I recently turned in a book proposal with a complete first chapter. It described events covered in three short articles I wrote circa 2000-2004. I used those as the skeleton of the chapter.

    Boy has my writing style changed in a quarter century. Mostly for the better. Less passive voice, fewer adjectives, more direct language.

    Reply
  12. Wyldkat Avatar
    Wyldkat

    I was just looking at a story I did as a prompt response five years ago … if someone had handed it to me blindly, I would not have known it was mine until I got to the very end. Weird.

    Reply

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