Robert Appleton's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"
Old Stories: Respect or Rewrite?
For an author, figuring out what to do with older, out-of-print stories is like stomping on nostalgia. I want to leave them just the way they are and re-release them that way, as old friends, but on the other hand, I've grown SO much as a writer since then. A part of me wants to rewrite every line, to drag the prose kicking and screaming into my current oeuvre. But how much of the original magic would I lose?
Maybe each story, even if it's fiction (perhaps especially if it's fiction), belongs to a specific time and place in an author's life, and should be left there. Who I was when I wrote it, how I saw the world back then, might be crucial to the way I wrote it, and retroactively second-guessing that voice might be impossible. I'm different now. More clinical as a writer. But those old, dreamy flourishes I roll my eyes at now were exactly how I wanted to tell my story back then.
The old saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And a more recent one: never f#@! around with a winner. But on the other hand, what if I *can* improve it and nostalgia is just getting in the way?
conundrum ~ n. a confusing or difficult problem or question
Maybe each story, even if it's fiction (perhaps especially if it's fiction), belongs to a specific time and place in an author's life, and should be left there. Who I was when I wrote it, how I saw the world back then, might be crucial to the way I wrote it, and retroactively second-guessing that voice might be impossible. I'm different now. More clinical as a writer. But those old, dreamy flourishes I roll my eyes at now were exactly how I wanted to tell my story back then.
The old saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And a more recent one: never f#@! around with a winner. But on the other hand, what if I *can* improve it and nostalgia is just getting in the way?
conundrum ~ n. a confusing or difficult problem or question
