Rereading Your Past AKA I Wrote That?

 by Sybil Johnson

While I’m proud of all the stories I’ve written over the years, I’m not fond of rereading them. Whether it’s a short story or a novel, I cringe every time I think about it. The older the story is the more resistant I become to reading it.

I don’t even like listening to an audio version of my books. The first 3 in my Aurora Anderson series are available in audio format and have been for a while now. I’ve only listened to the first one, Fatal Brushstroke, on a driving trip up the West Coast. I even found myself gasping once and briefly wondering what would happen next! Yes, I really wrote the book. I had to laugh at myself. In my defense, I’d written a couple books in the series since then and pretty much as soon as I start on a new book, I’ve forgotten what happened in the previous one. Even though the narrator did a fine job, I don’t think I can bring myself to listen to the other two.

I have no problem rereading and rereading and rereading a story that I’m currently working on. I rather enjoy editing it. But, once it’s been published somewhere, I have no desire to read it again. There has to be a good reason for it.

I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect it’s a case of what if. What if I reread it and the writing is just awful? What if the plot is bad? What if the characters aren’t interesting? I suspect it can’t be that bad since someone else liked it enough to publish it, but these thoughts still go through my head. 

Recently, I found the need to reread a couple of short stories that were published in Mysteryical-e in 2009 (“Cemetery Plot”) and 2011 (“Some Like It Raw”) These stories were published several years before my first book came out. I’m currently working on a short story that featured the same characters. I remembered them reasonably well, but I couldn’t remember all of the details.

So I braced myself and started reading. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the stories. I’m sure they could be improved, but I was happy with the versions that were published.

Felix, my first crochet project. Not perfect, but I'm still proud of him.

 

I find it much easier to forgive mistakes in my craft projects. I don’t have this same reaction to what I’ve painted or crocheted or embroidered or macramed... I know I did the best I could at the time and am proud of the result. I’m striving to feel that way about my writing.

What about you? Do you cringe at the thought of rereading something you’ve written? Do you think there’s value in rereading an old story to see what could be improved?