When Reading Old Writing

13

Recently I found myself reading old stories I’d written a long time ago. Not whole manuscripts, mind you, just bits and pieces of the story and hastily drawn out plot lines. My first reaction, as I’m sure most writers can relate so, was the feeling of embarrassed amusement at my level of skill – and then the obsessive urge to run through and edit everything to make it better.

This led to the “oh I’ll just rewrite it better!” which proceeded to involve me spending hours re-writing old stories. Fun? Definitely. I forgot how many cool ideas I have floating around. Productive? … not so much. Maybe it’ll be helpful in a few years when I decide to take up the project for real, but I’ll probably be a better writer at that point anyway and just end up re-writing it again.

So that was an unnecessary distraction from writing what I was supposed to be writing, but it was neat to see how many ideas are stored on my little ol’ computer here. Not only that, but I surprised myself with how interesting they were. I’d forgotten some of them and had moments ofΒ “hey, did I really think of that? I’m kinda cool!”

Ha.

Some of it may never be useable due to it being a cliche or overused idea in the current market, but maybe a few of the ideas could be melded together to create something workable. Whenever I get to that point. Meanwhile, I’m trying to shut the door on the various stories which are now clamoring for my attention.Β They all want a piece of my brain apparently.

Have you ever gone through your old writings and found something fascinating that you’d mostly forgotten about? How many “set-aside-for-later” ideas do you have running around in your brain?

13 responses to “When Reading Old Writing”

  1. I have 4 book ideas I really want to write. Sometimes I’ll tell myself “Autumn you have got to finish this book already so you can write the other ones!”

    • I do that all the time! I used to jump from story to story depending on the week whenever the fancy struck me, but I’ve been doing a lot better focusing on one project and seeing it through (or at least main sections, if not the whole thing). However, this does leave some angst in wanting to write the others… ergo, the clamor when I look at the other stories.

      I’ve got crazy amounts of bits and pieces of stories… but I think I’m at four main ones, as well. It’s fun. ^.^

      • I’ve had to tell myself to focus too! I keep a notebook with all my ideas so hopefully one day I can write them or be like “hah! What was I thinking?!” And yes! Writing is fun (most of the time πŸ˜€)!

  2. Luckily most of my extra ideas are related to additional books in a series I intend to write one day based on the current novel I am crafting. Best to finish Book 1 before worrying about Books 2-6!

    • Oh yeah, don’t even get me started on how my stories turn into a series… X-D

      I’ve managed to curb my impulse to jump stories, but jumping around within a series is the worse. Often times I’ll jump forward in time and write down whatever is banging around in my brain just so I can return to writing linearly to actually finish the book. It’s both helpful and slightly counter productive.

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