Having finished Hoodies 2 and Book of Pain, and waiting for my wonderful beta readers to give me their impressions of what I've written so far of Kongomato 2, I cracked open the vault where languished my old floppy discs. Did we ever really use those? It's hard to believe. Anyway, I retrieved, finally, the first half of Old Geezers 2 that I had written on Word Perfect 5.1 which I still believe to be the best word processing package ever written - right until Coral bought and buggered it up.
I just cannot believe how intrinsically awful it is. Not the plot, I still like that. What's awful is my writing style, or lack thereof. So many "That's", no contractions and passive verbs slouching limply all over the MS. Not that I think I'm the best writer in the world now but I have definitely improved. So, and I don't think I'm the only one, if you want to see how much you, as writers have improved your technique, see if you can find something you wrote about five years ago. Prepare to cringe. I did.
I keep everything I write. I once reread something I wrote 15 years ago and could not stop alternately cringing and laughing. There are a few gems in it, but they're deeply buried. Still, it's fun to see how your writing progresses as you keep at it.
ReplyDeleteI have a few things I wrote as a child, too, and when I reread one of them to my son's class last winter after being asked to speak about writing, I was surprised at how good it was (for a 10-year-old, as that's how old I was when I wrote it).
I still have the very first novel I ever wrote; about thirty years ago. I'm far too afraid to read it. I'll just look back fondly at the memory and tell myself that it's something the world will be deprived of forever.
ReplyDeleteMy beloved daughter laughed herself sick at my second novel - an incisive expose of industrial Britain.
It's amazing how far we writers come if we keep on writing, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteHey, I loved floppy discs. They worked for me.
Sadly, I never did keep all my writings or poetry.
It's a pity.
ReplyDeleteI'm so ancient I still have some 5 and a half inch floppies.