My friend Doug, whom I met in a writing class about eighteen years ago, asked, “How long can you put aside a story and still return to it, legitimately? 10 20 30 years? When to burn shit?”
A brilliant musician and writer, Doug is a very creative guy. Probably quite prolific. I don’t know how many stories he’s got in his attic / closet / writing trunk. I wouldn’t be surprised if it rivals the 25,426 items (poems, letters, journals) found in Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’s trunk.
Even a slacker like myself has several completed old stories and novels that I could return to, legitimately, because they’re not publishable yet. So Doug’s question sparked joy in me. Can we Marie Kondo our writing lives?*
If stories were, say, outfits, we could invent a rule of thumb, like “if you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it.”
Or we could apply the “one in-one out” rule, which says every time you bring something new into your home, something similar has to go out. But stories aren’t just material objects. They are personal creations. With stories, nothing existed before you wrote them. Then you wrote them, and they exist.
And stories can’t be compared to each other like (say) two black turtlenecks. Even if we repeatedly mine the same thematic territory in our writing, no two stories are similar enough to say they’re doing the same thing.
Besides, it’s harder to evaluate our own writing than it is to choose between two turtlenecks.
In the very first Pat’s Postcard almost two years ago (when they were called the Thursday Postcard), True Confessions of a Project Hoarder, I talked a good game about letting go of old projects to make room for the new. But when I moved this summer, shit got real. (If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you might recall my incessant complaining. Don’t worry, it’s over!)
I didn’t often think about revising old stories, but as I packed up my office I became aware that there were actual boxes and binders full of novels and stories I’d drafted, slaved over, printed out, reworked, cut up and pasted back together, whatevs….
A few boxes and binders isn’t bad, and it sure wasn’t everything I’ve ever written. I’ve been through a few computers since I started writing (back in the days of floppy discs!) and I didn’t always print stuff out. If it wasn’t in print, I don’t have it now. Pretty much every novel MS I wrote before 2011 is gone.
But it was still quite a bit of stuff.
When I came across the boxes of stories this summer, I was in no mood for evaluating. I didn’t even leaf through them. I knew what was there, and I knew that those stories had been written by someone else–the “me” of two, five, or ten years ago. So I transferred the manuscripts into brown paper grocery bags and put them in the trunk of my car.
Then I drove to the Zero Waste facility (recycling depot) down on N. Kent Avenue.There, I backed my car up to the giant bin that takes cardboard and mixed paper. I took the first couple of bags up the metal stairs and stared into the opening, thinking, “this is really happening.”
Then I dropped the bags in and went back for the rest.
Oh YEAH.
Weirdly, since that trip to the recycling depot, my ability to let go of stories has blossomed. If you’re in writer Pam Bustin’s wonderful Soul Stories Writing Circle, you’ll know that I recently ditched a novel I’ve been working on for oh, five-ish years. It wasn’t awful. I’d created a fairly solid plot and written about 40,000 words. But I realized about a month ago that it wasn’t going to work.
So I pulled the plug.The relief was immediate!
Back to Doug’s question, which, to be fair, he posed in of the spirit of friendship and generosity (I asked him for something to write about).
I would say if you are INTERESTED in one or more of the stories, if you feel like rewriting it from your ‘current self’ perspective, or you can see how to make it better, then don’t burn it. It doesn’t really matter how long it’s been around, if it’s still YOU.
But if it’s just another turtleneck, or if your earlier self wrote it and you’re not sparked by joy at the thought of revising it, I recommend getting out the matches.
As an inspirational-poster sage once wrote,
“If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back in the form of a new story, it’s yours.
If you feel tingly relief all over, it never was.”
What’s your position on returning to earlier work? Do you keep drafts around for a while, or do you conduct the odd purge?
Let me know, I’d love to hear!
Cheers,
Pat
ps Came across this Indeed post on how to get published as a writer. So weird that of the five steps listed, none mentions actually writing the book.
pps Thanks for helping me out, Doug!
Now that the novel-writing project is off the table, I finished my goofy guided Pleasure Journal for 2024 (see below) and started writing an essay. The essay is fun because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m driving fast in the dark with no headlights, listening to whimpering sounds coming from the back seat.
The last Postcard generated some very interesting responses from writers about their tactics for quashing self-doubt. Stay tuned for those in a future Postcard.
I’m going to New Zealand in January. YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! The objective is to visit family and friends (Hi Mike!), swim in the ocean, eat delicious food, and come back rested.
I Offer You Pleasure or Pain…or Both!
Want More Pleasure in Your Life?
This weekly guided journal is a good gift for writers, artists and other creatives. Retrain the brains of workaholics, pessimists, optimists, and anyone who’s ready to get more out of their one and only life on Earth.
Book Bag
Miss Pym Disposes, by Josephine Tey
Scribner, 1998
First published in 1946, this nontraditional mystery is set in a women’s physical training college in the English countryside. Miss Pym, to her own surprise, is a literary celebrity after publishing a no-nonsense book on human psychology. But when tragedy happens at the school, her keen observations of students and staff make her the perfect detective.
This novel made me want to eat buttered scones and read mysteries for the rest of my life.