Thought I'd share this, just to see if anyone else has ever done anything similar.
Was at my parents' place this afternoon sorting out some old stuff they wanted out of the way, and I found a pad of handwritten stuff from four years ago. Only the other week I was berating myself, having concluded I must have thrown it out. Then once I found it in the back of a magazine rack and got my reprieve, I wondered if I dared look. It was my own personal Pandora's Box.
Fool that I am, I looked. Twenty pages of shit, just as I'd feared, but two pages of gold which I'm about to get typed up with a view to workshopping them if I can figure out how to put a decent end on them (which was why I abandoned them before, I think.) It's only about 1000 words worth, but even that was worth looking at it for - one of those moments where I think 'Perhaps I was better than I thought back then.' It was my first serious attempt at a short story I might have been able to send out somewhere, and what was I writing about? A guy who's making a fur-suit. I must have been bonkers. I probably still am.
So, do I tear the rest of those pages up? Part of me just can't do it, even knowing it makes me cringe to read it. For better or worse, I wrote this stuff, and it's part of tracing how I improved and what I still/no longer do. I guess I'm keeping it. I'm certainly keeping what I'm certain was my first go with the story that became Shadow's Talent, my current novel effort now on draft 2, four years down the line. Seems bizarre comparing what I started with to what I've got now - the characters are barely recognisable other than by the names and and the focus was all over the place. And one upon a time I dared believe this was good writing.
Post your own nostalgia here.
Funny i had the very same happen to me on Monday, had a week off work and had a bit of a clear out. To my surprise I found a load of stuff going back as far as 1999. It's complete rubbish, no structure or even plot. There are a few lines i'm keeping back to use were I can mind :)
I've bined a lot of it bt kept over a few things loking back at how bad it was has shown me where i've gotten stronger.
I have two file boxes full of old writing, including the novel I wrote at 18. It is called 'Invisible Cowboys' and I wrote the initial notes/plot sketching while high as fuck on acid and watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. It reads like it should; like a kid who'd never written more than a couple of short stories for grade 10 English class, but I'll still keep it forever.
Every character was named after a pet I'd had. Can't beat that with a stick.
I did a creative writing class novella at like 16 or 17 too about an art forger with amnesia, because all good noir has somebody with amnesia in there? I don't have that one around but I remember just fine how awful it was. I have a lot of old notebooks though, with ideas and stories I still kick around. I realize quickly though that I'm still not good enough to write them. Or they're just bad stories.
Keep your old writing.
When you feel like you're the best writer, ever, read it to remind yourself how far you have to go.
When you feel like you're the worst writer, ever, read it to remind yourself how far you've come.
Your rediscovery of old work, made me go dig for mine. Luckily they are all in this metal box, which I haven't looked in for a while and I don't think I realized just how many sketch/notebooks I've collected till now. And these are just the bound ones, I still have an entire drawer filled with loose paper.
It was fun to dig through them. See some old drawings, ideas and story outlines, but mostly it was good to see the improvement in my writing as well as my drawing. A good enough reason to go digging through old work sometimes. Nostalgia, the occasional reminder that you're getting better and a revived idea here and there.
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I actually just looked through some of the stuff I did in college and was surprised how much I still liked it. I feel like a completely different writer now, though.
