Do you read your old stuff?

Not if I can help it.

Okay, okay! I do read it sometimes. Cringing the whole time, usually. But it is interesting to see the difference, and occasionally I think there might have been a decent idea in there somewhere...

If I do, it's generally a horrible experience, and I start wishing that I could read with my eyes closed.

I think that it is important to read your old stuff. It gives you the opportunity to see how your writing skills have improved - and, who knows, there may be something there that, with your improved writing skills, you can turn into something that turns out to be great.

Cindy

I read my old stuff all the time. In fact, I just spent $10 on ebay buying a copy of Eerie #46 because I had a piece of fiction printed on their reader's page when I was 15.

I don't have any old stuff - binned it all.

When I read through it, it made me want to set fire to my head.

I'm with Scarlet. My old stuff reeks. I have some of the things I wrote as a child and my early poetry, but my mid-level stuff (highschool, college) made me cringe so badly that I chunked a lot of it. I try to pretend it never happened, although I recognize that it was necessary to get through that stage.

If I happen upon something I wrote awhile ago, I take a peek to see if it's any good or not. Most of the time, it's terrible. But there are times when I see a paragraph or a sentence that gives me an idea for some new material. I save most of my writings--even when it's just a page--on my hard drive and thumb drive. I even have hard copies in a large (now overflowing) folder.

I read it from time to time just to see where I've been. My NF is stronger than my fiction (in the old stuff, anyhow), and often with the fiction I can tell what I was reading at the time. It's interesting to look back and see how my style's changed over the years.

Most of my early works are no more. I went through a purging stage, which preceded my non-writing stage. I do have a few things, but try not to look at them. I now refuse to trash anything.

Yup. If it's unpublished old stuff, I would rewrite and make it better. If it's published old stuff, I would just read it again... just for fun. I actually think it's a good thing to notice that my old stuff kind of "sucked" or that my writing wasn't as good as now -- that means I'm improving and growing as a writer. It's a good thing.

Actually, I do. I start out with extreme trepidation - fear of finding some huge blunder that went unnoticed for years. But once I get passed that feeling, I really enjoy rediscovering things I said and seeing how much I've improved over the years. Sometimes I surprise myself because I'd forgotten saying this or that, and sometimes I even impress myself with a turn of phrase or particular sentence or paragraph. And hearing from a reader who just discovered something you wrote years ago is a kick, too.

But mostly it's good to see improvement.

I do sometimes. It can be very informative about things I'm doing differently, or sometimes the same habits that drag me down now are more visible in work that I haven't looked at in a while.

Also, for every three times I cringe at some old error I made or problem I'd fix, I have one time when I read a phrase and think, "I came up with that? I love it!" And then sort of wonder where this creativity is when I NEED it.

I read rejected stuff five years or younger. I feel that it can be rewritten and sold. Before that--no.

It would help, If i knew where I put my 'old stuff'

Any other slashers?

Sure. I used to write a lot of slash though. Actually, that was all I wrote for a lot of years. *shines halo*

Of course. When I can find it. Often, it's not half as bad as I remember it/feared. It's also good because I can tell how I've grown and how I might still need to improve. Plus, it's a wealth of ideas.

When I need a good laugh, I read the first novel that I started. I love it, because I made every rookie mistake that you can imagine:

1. Overuse of adverbs and adjectives
2. Flashbacks
3. Passive sentences

The story starts with one paragraph describing a character, then goes into 3 pages of pointless backstory, lol!

I always read my old stuff, because I never remember the details so it's like coming at it new. Plus I've never finished anything longer than a short story, so I have to read things again if I decide to go back to them or pillage them for good bits. :-D

I like to skim through old stuff. I've been using a computer to write since I was 12, and so everytime I got a new computer I would just transfer all the old stuff. There was the debaucle with trying to open WriteNow (anyone remember that?) files with Word, but I mostly got over it.

I go through to see what I can steal from myself. For such poor writing, some of my characters and their relationships were surpringly well developed and I like to steal bits of that.

It's also good to see if I can spot why the old stuff is bad...and hopefully if I have not eliminated it, I can do that now. In addition, it's fun to surprise yourself with things you've created but had completely forgotten about. Write enough thousands of pages over the course of a few years and your bound to forget things and finding them again is like reading someone else's work.

Yes, but not the stuff that I know will make my teeth feel all curly. Dunno why I'm keeping it. Waiting for the day I'll be brave enough to read it, I suppose. Agree with The Grift about nicking stuff from yourself. Transplanting characters from one setting to another and saying, "There. So you got out of a bad relationship with a controlling hoodie gansta-wanabee. Let's see how you fare against the undead, Missy."

Soccer Mom said:

I'm with Scarlet...

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You wanted to set fire to my head too?

seun said:

I think it's worth keeping older stuff if for nothing else than to see how far you have progressed.

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I wish I'd done that too. But when I chucked all my old stuff, I was in a frenzy of "I'll never be any good." I couldn't see myself ever improving. And now I think I have, and I would have liked the chance to observe how much, by reading the very first draft of my trunk novel and comparing it to what I'm working on now.

ccarver30 said:

Sure. I used to write a lot of slash though. Actually, that was all I wrote for a lot of years. *shines halo*

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I heart slash and slash/yaoi. I've thought of it, but never put it down on paper (e-paper, whatever...)

One of these days I'm gonna. I have many couples in mind.