I've found myself paralyzed many times in my career, as I talked about in yesterday's post, Part 1. I think sometimes we hit a wall (or shore or whatever it may be for us) and we come to a dead halt. We can't produce something as beautiful as that person created. We don't have the potential to rise above the major suckiness of what we've created in the past. Sometimes it feels that no matter how hard we are trying, it's like we're stuck on a treadmill never moving forward. Sometimes the treadmill breaks and we give up entirely. Because what's the point? Looking back on what you've created in the past, you either glow with pride or you cringe in shame. For me, that's how it was for a long time - until recently.
My friend Davin Malasarn, whom I blog with over on the Literary Lab, decided to gather some of his favorite short stories and self-publish them in a collection titled The Wild Grass. This was something I had always thought about doing, but never had the guts to do. I was proud of some of my old short stories, but I also cringed because they were so old. I am such a better writer now, right? I hoped at the time, anyway! As I watched Davin's progress on publishing the book, I thought, I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. I had self-published Cinders a year earlier, but this would be different. The only reason I had put Cinders out there was because I knew without a doubt it was good enough. It was a personal project I created just to self-publish. But my short stories? Old college crap? Even though some of them had been published before, this was a big leap.
But I did it. I put True Colors out there.
And let me tell you, I have learned something quite profound from this. It has been profound for me, anyway. I'm not sure if this will strike a chord with anyone else, but I can at least share!
What happened while I was putting together my collection and sending it off to a friend for edits was that I realized how much I didn't want to change about these old stories. Many of them have been published before, but that wasn't it. I thought for sure that I'd be tempted to completely overhaul everything. I mean, I structure sentences differently these days. I might start one story differently, or never use a verb the way I did, or even go out on a limb like I did in some of them. But the more I read through them, the more I realized how many of the stories encapsulate a certain time of my life. Changing them would be a sin. Changing them would be to erase something integral to myself, something I treasure even if it's not meeting my expectations of my finest writing. So I listened to my wise editor friend and accepted her slight suggestions here and there and left it at that.
I think self-publishing is beginning to create a bad sort of phenomenon these days, both for readers and for writers. I've seen this sort of thing happen in reviews: "This story is excellent except for this part and this part and this part. If the author changes these things, the book will work. And hey, Author, I see you self-published this. Why don't you go change those things and re-publish the book? You can do that, you know."
I am not kidding. I have literally seen that in reviews. More than once. It makes me want to throw a brick at something. The book is published, people. Unless the authors wants to do a second edition not based on random stranger feedback, I don't think the book is getting republished. But sadly, I think some authors feel like past work they've accepted and were once proud of is now not good enough because they're a better writer now, or they've read one too many critical reviews. They start to think about changing this and that and putting a new version out there. But would you really appreciate that as a reader? Knowing the book you bought last week is now heavily revised and you'd have to purchase it again to read the better version? By the way, I'm not talking about covers or other marketing things for a book - those change all the time. I'm talking about the actual published story. And it doesn't only happen with published material. Sometimes we look at the old stuff in our drawer and we think about rewriting it completely from scratch because, well, we think it sucks, and what's the point of doing anything with it if we can't bring it up to par?
But back to my point about appreciating what I've done in the past. I think reaching such a point has opened up a new kind of life for me. I work on my stories and novels now with much less anxiety. I'm not biting my nails 24-7 worrying about getting it perfect. I do the best I can with the talent I have at the time. And I write it. And I'm proud of it. And I move on. Revising and editing happen, yes. I learn as I write, yes. I always aim to make it the best it can be, yes. But there comes a point where we have to let go of what we've created and move on to the next project. If anything has taught me that, it has been my novel, The Breakaway, which comes out this May after literally seventeen years since the year I first wrote it. Talk about not being able to let go of a project. Finally, though, I will. Simple? Not exactly. Easy? No. Was it a mistake to keep holding onto that book? I don't think so because I finally learned something! I came back to it with the intention of calling it good and sending it to my publisher to see if they'd take it. I wasn't going to keep fiddling with it until the end of time trying to get it up to par to the way I write now. It is what it is and if nobody ever wanted it the way it was, well, it would have to live in my drawer. I had to move on. Will I want to change things about it once it's out? Heck. No.
And just to clarify, I think it's good for newer writers to work on a continuous project for a healthy amount of time, but I also think there's a point where the writer should accept that the project is either dead or completely finished, and then start another with the knowledge they gained from the last. I also think that point comes faster with the more we write and learn. The thing we have to remember is that the project is what it is and we should accept it. In my case, I published my old stuff because that was my way to get it off my chest and show that I am still proud of it. A creative career is not made up of what is our best now. It's made up of everything we are for the entire time we've been creating. That's pretty awesome if you ask me.
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