A small goldmine of ideas

Well I went rummaging around for some of my old stories and not only did I find my old short story but I found a whole bunch of poems and short fiction pieces that I wrote. I was over the moon! I wrote these things back in high school and some of them were graded works.

I used to take creative writing classes all throughout my primary school years. Some of them are what you'd expect from a young person but a few pieces were truly inspired. I know that in the near future I will be re-dusting and revise the best pieces for publication.

I think that I should also state that I just finished The Pumpkin Princess first draft! I'll be posting updates over the course of the month but the first major step is done. Expect The Pumpkin Princess to come out in October.

Rehabilitating old stories

I was reading one of my favorite writer's forums today and ran across a thread about old stories.

It got me thinking about some of the stories I wrote back in high school. There are two stories I still remember vivdly, short stories. One was called 1929 and the protaganist's name was Orl. Odd name, but anyway, you can pretty much guess what it was about. This wasn't a science fiction or fantasy story, if I remember it correctly.

Then there was a story about a man who was a wine connoisseur - an arrogant one who is invited to a dinner which turns out to be a frightening affair for him. I had kept those stories around for many years but it's been so long now that I wonder if I still have the copies. When I have some time I plan to go digging around for those stories.

Why? I want to rehabilitate them. I think that I can make them better. Much better. People seemed to like them back then, especially my T.A.G. teachers. I wonder if people will like them now?

It will be a long time before I make a decision about exactly how to rewrite them because I'm in the middle of so many other writing projects. We'll see. . .

Cannibalizing previous work

When you've been writing for a long time you come to the realization that some of the stuff you wrote when you were young was just awful. Pure crap!

I've written two novels in the past. The first one is something that I was proud of way back in the day that I now would not allow to see the light of day. The second one is ok, but isn't on par with the kind of work I'm doing now - not to say the stories I write now are perfect but they are certainly better than my first two novels.

Another thing that many writers do is cannibalize their work, which is exactly what I've been doing with both of these works. The novels themselves are not something I want to publish, but many turns of phrase and the ideas presented in them are wonderful. I plan to use them in future works. In fact, I have already begun cannibalizing them for my current stories. Stories like that, while not publishable, are a goldmine of ideas and well written sentences and interesting turns of phrase. It's like getting ready to cook a meal and turning to the cupboards and the refrigerator and finding them full of good things to use. It's a wonderful feeling and they enhance the stories that use them.

It also let's you know that all that hard work you put into a novel that isn't publishable after all counted for something useful.