I've recently looked back at some of my earlier work. One stood out in particular, a horror story. Reading it, I was flabbergasted. The sheer amount of skill I put into that one piece made it seem like someone else wrote it. Anyone else have moments like this?
I've had moments like that; where I can't remember the thought process that I put into the piece. Sometimes I'll look back on something that I wrote and forget where it came from. Looking back on old work has gone in the other direction for me as well. Sometimes I'll find something I wrote years before and I'll cringe and throw it away. I know the feeling your talking about. When that happens it's a good opportunity to use what you know now to make the piece even better, or just add to it.
Oh, yes. Sometimes while I am writing the story comes to me so naturally and so perfect that it is almost like I am watching the story being written through some one else's hands.
When it's good, it's really cool to read and if it's been a while, it seems like someone else wrote it. When it's bad, I usually just look away quickly and bury it under heaps of stuff that I won't look at in a long time
LOL. So true. You just have to look away in disgust and shrink into a little mouse. Those times beat up you ego a little. It's like riding a horse and you get thrown. You have to get right back on. This is why I hate editing. Its not that it is boring; it is that it is scary.
Oh yeah. Especially because I write so differently now. I'm almost nostalgic about a lot of it. I miss the way I used to write, even though I'm technically better now.
Wow that is right. I relate it to chess. When I first started playing I always went with the gambits and 4 move mates. I would bring my queen out first thing. There was nothing like owning the other player but if you played like that against some one experienced you would almost always lose. So as I started to play with strategy I found the games were slower and we played down to our pawn promotions. I still missed the feel of a quick game and when you won it was so much better but you lost more times than you won. I am not sure if it is the same just how I feel.
Yes xD I read my novel draft from when I was 9. The first line started with a description of a 'blonde' house. I shook my head in shame. All my chapters were only 100 words and heck, I don't even know where that draft was going. The other draft when I was 10, was slightly more acceptable. It was actually readable and had a plot! :O Yeah...Good times :'D
I have quite a bit of hand-written stuff, written aged 15-25 ish. It's always fascinating to look back, to see the crossed-out lines, the doodles and 'experiments' in getting that story or poem onto paper. Just the other week I found a notebook where I'd written approx 20-30,000 words of a would-be murder mystery. I was probably 15 when I wrote that. It didn't even sound too bad in places, although my writing is very different and hopefully 'improved' now.
I would have to agree the same with Mallory. To be honest, I don't care how bad my story is, even though it can be as good as it can get. You want to know how I write my story? I just put words on the computer and then go to sleep on it. I never give up on the idea of the story itself though, but how I write it. Then once I can improve on my writing I would use the same idea and write it better.
Hi, I've actually discovered so far that I can't look back at what I've written. The two novels I've finished and put on the kindle, I simply cannot bring myself to look at. Its like I killed them when I finished them. Maybe in ten years. Cheers.
Sometimes I'm impressed with what I've written if I've forgotten about it, and I think 'wow, I wrote that!' But most of the time when I discover old things I've written, I'm like 'oh dear, I wrote this', and think about all the changes I need to make. So it's usually embarrassment than being pleasantly surprised at what I've written.
Since it seems I'm getting better all the time at writing, I love to go back and lol at my rough drafts. What's hard for me is when I sent something premature to my former professor because I needed a literary kick-in-the-butt. When I got it back, I cringed at the stuff that was poorly written because I knew that he had read the same thing. I think it's good to re-read what you've already written. Especially if you write series. I hate it when series authors leave gaping continuity errors and hint at interesting plot-lines for future books that never come into fruition... all simply because they never read any of their books once they were published.
Of the few things that have survived from my earlier years, there is one particular story I wrote that was pretty crappy, to be severely honest. But the content, the ideas were interesting and quite good. I just might take them up again and use them for a future story
