My Old Stuff Ain't Half Bad

Last week’s post on submitting my novel got me thinking.

[OH AND - I SUBMITTED IT! - TWICE!]

🦸‍♂️

While I was digging out the MASTER version of the novel, I got all sentimental and started looking through some other, older writing. I have pages and pages of writing that, for whatever reason, has been pushed to the side and forgotten about. It has never seen the light of day.

I did a quick count. I have 171 items in my ‘writing’ folder. I reckon about a third of them are backups or duplicates. However, a few of them are folders with multiple stories and ideas within them. So I reckon I’ve amassed about 130 different stories in various stages of completion over the years. I mean, I’m 39. I’ve been writing for twenty-plus years. I don’t think that’s too bad in productivity terms. In fact, it’s probably on the low side.

I had two immediate reactions to this:

1. I’ve wasted my time.
2. I’m not very good.

Some readers might wonder why I continue to bother.

Those are all good questions. So I thought about it some more. Because immediate reactions are for quitters.

It might feel strange, but I’m proud of that body of work. As I looked through the stories I found some absolute pearls that I really enjoyed writing and am really happy with. That was balanced with some that (mercifully) stopped after half a page of self-serving drivel.

Most is somewhere in the middle, of course.

If you ask most artists, you’ll find a big pile of work behind them that wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst. It was just them trying out things. From looking at ideas and seeing if they fit. That’s what made up the most of my unpublished pile.

What can I do with these old projects? I think there are three buckets that you can put each one in.

BUCKET TIME!

Bin them

Some of the stories and scripts here are, looking back, rubbish. That’s OK. It’s OK to write things that people won’t read. I tend to sketch out stories that seem good at the time, but ultimately end up nowhere. I do this because, if I let them sit in my head unwritten, I honestly believe that they will clog up my brain and slow down my creativity, and ultimately lead to me crying in the bathtub (which I don’t fit in).

Improve them

For some of the ‘meh’ projects, I might try and improve them. After leaving them for so long, I’m rereading them with a fresh set of eyes. I have learnt loads since I initially put pen to paper on most of them, and I have improved my craft substantially. If I apply that learning to these old stories, I’ll be able to make them a whole lot better. They’ll go from something that I remember with a fondness to something that I love and want people to read.

Submit them

There’s definitely some really good stories in there. I might tidy some up and share them with people (or on this blog!), I might submit some to publications. Just because it’s old to me doesn’t mean it’s old to everyone. Editors won’t care if something was written three minutes ago or three decades, they will only care if it’s a good story. This is quite time-consuming (although, it’s easy to argue, not as time-consuming as coming at something brand new).

All of the above! (you may have seen this coming)

In the most obvious plot twist since that thing where you guessed the plot twist, I’m probably going to apply all of the ways forward above to various bits of my work. The bar needs to be set high - some of this belongs in the first bucket for a reason. Where I see promise, though, I think I owe it to myself and to the work to post it somewhere. That might mean here on this blog, it might mean a submission to a magazine or an agent. Heck, I might even collect them all and release something.

I feel better now. I’m not clogging up those data farms in the clouds for no reason (that’s how it works, right?). Old stuff ain’t crap stuff. It’s just not quite… good. Not yet.