Okay, this is a vital question that has nagged me for much of my serious writing life and yet I've never properly voiced it to anyone (a rare one for me. This is probably what bothers me most about myself as a fellow ink-slinger:
Okay, I have about 500 poems, short stories, novels, essays and screenplays saved on my desktop. I've posted another 700 on the Internet (all have been removed from public sight, on the advice of people wiser than myself, but they're still saved), and I've got many more personal stories that I like to tell people with the verve of an Irish yarn-spinner, but for all of these thousands upon thousands of words, here's the weird thing:
Once I've gotten them down, once I've written them and shown them to someone, or posted them on-line, or told someone (or, in my case, many, many people), I no longer want to touch that writing again. I've had agents tell me to work on novels and keep submitting my stuff after giving me full reads and even editing my stuff, I've been encouraged to submit my writing by writers for The Times and O.Henry Prize winners, I've won awards for short stories and journalism, and yet, once the stories are out of me and on the page, or once I've spooled it out for an audience, I never look at it again.
Instead of going back and making it better, or taking the excellent bits and sewing them together with the excellent bits of other pieces and making something truly excellent all around, I avoid them like a plague-ridden Mel Gibson. I mean, I truly don't understand why I do that and it really, really bothers me. The last thing I submitted was a comic book screenplay to a local photographer and which is now being produced. Before that, it's been two years since I've sent anything out, and I used to send stuff out monthly. Now, I just keep writing and writing and squirreling it away and it serves no purpose. Yet, once the stuff is out of me, I take no interest in it at all.
And I was just wondering if anyone could venture a guess as to why.
Thank you very much.
Okay, I have about 500 poems, short stories, novels, essays and screenplays saved on my desktop. I've posted another 700 on the Internet (all have been removed from public sight, on the advice of people wiser than myself, but they're still saved), and I've got many more personal stories that I like to tell people with the verve of an Irish yarn-spinner, but for all of these thousands upon thousands of words, here's the weird thing:
Once I've gotten them down, once I've written them and shown them to someone, or posted them on-line, or told someone (or, in my case, many, many people), I no longer want to touch that writing again. I've had agents tell me to work on novels and keep submitting my stuff after giving me full reads and even editing my stuff, I've been encouraged to submit my writing by writers for The Times and O.Henry Prize winners, I've won awards for short stories and journalism, and yet, once the stories are out of me and on the page, or once I've spooled it out for an audience, I never look at it again.
Instead of going back and making it better, or taking the excellent bits and sewing them together with the excellent bits of other pieces and making something truly excellent all around, I avoid them like a plague-ridden Mel Gibson. I mean, I truly don't understand why I do that and it really, really bothers me. The last thing I submitted was a comic book screenplay to a local photographer and which is now being produced. Before that, it's been two years since I've sent anything out, and I used to send stuff out monthly. Now, I just keep writing and writing and squirreling it away and it serves no purpose. Yet, once the stuff is out of me, I take no interest in it at all.
And I was just wondering if anyone could venture a guess as to why.
Thank you very much.
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