Cringing

[GoldenCojones]

Do you ever cringe, even just a little, when you read your old stories?

I have spent a little time over the last couple of days re-reading some of the crap I wrote back in 1999 - 2001. Wow! It's a lot worse than the crap I write today

Honestly, I read some of my old stories and just cringed. "Dang! I wrote that?" I remember writing it and thinking how good it was. Makes me wonder if in ten years I'll go back and read my stories from today and cringe again.

 

[sr71plt]

Nope. But I try not to read my old stories. I'm too busy writing new ones. I don't live in the past (except sometimes in my stories--like the one that posted today, to some extent. It's about a painting that's hanging in my den.)

 

[GoldenCojones]

I think it's interesting that you try not to read your old stories. I don't read mine very often, but after a long while I sometimes do. I don't cringe when I read all of them, but on too many of them I do. And then the editor in me comes out and I want to change them. I resist that though, too much effort for too little gain.

I do think, though, that re-reading older stories helps make me a better writer. I can see mistakes I made when writing and pitfalls I fell into and I think it helps me avoid those same mistakes and pitfalls in new stories.

 

[RejectReality]

I cringe sometimes, but I can get something out of them as well.

I updated an ancient story called "Denethia" that was little more than flavor text for a monster in my PnP game into "Harvest of Blood". Another ancient story that I can't even remember the name of off hand was the seed of "Finding Karen"

And, I can take advantage of that pure cringe factor if I want to with LST3K. Post my own gods-awful garbage, and then make fun of it

Honestly, I still enjoy reading back through most everything I've written since starting at Lit, though. There are a few that I'm not overly fond of ( my first few attempts at Nude Day stories ) and a few I'd like to tweak as I read them, but there's not much I've posted that I'm unhappy with.

Quite a few of them make me smile every time I read them.

 

[sr71plt]

I think it's interesting that you try not to read your old stories. I don't read mine very often, but after a long while I sometimes do. I don't cringe when I read all of them, but on too many of them I do. And then the editor in me comes out and I want to change them. I resist that though, too much effort for too little gain.

I do think, though, that re-reading older stories helps make me a better writer. I can see mistakes I made when writing and pitfalls I fell into and I think it helps me avoid those same mistakes and pitfalls in new stories.

It's not a matter of trying not to read them, really. By the time they are old--some time after posting them to Lit.--there's not a damn thing, really, that I can do to them. They aren't precious gems to be recut constantly. They are just written stories. Before coming to Lit., they were in the marketplace. They can't be changed there, and they were worked over by an editor before going there. They are done.

And there are more than 800 of them at Lit. Think of the time wasted if I went back to read them. To me, writing is a renewable resource. If there's something that hits me about what I think I should have done in an old story, I just write a new one.

I've been writing for pay for decades. Trust me, at some point you don't think about developing your skills--you just think about exercising them. I felt the same way about my career. After twenty years, I started turning down training opportunities (unless I was tired and needed the time off). It no longer was time to take time away from work to learn new skills--it was time to use to the max the skills I already had learned. By then I had three masters degrees in my career area. That was enough to do my job (which, in the end was pretty much watching others doing their jobs and signing off on their pay).

 

[TxRad]

The first thing i ever wrote was a 287 page erotic novel.

Several times I've read through the twenty chapters and tried to edit it. Short choppy sentences was the first thing. And from there it went down hill. Over the years, I cleaned up a lot of the mess and then i sent it to a friend for an edit.

The red ink looked like the massacre scene from a Freddie Kruger movie.

I'm still wading through the whole mess from time to time and rewriting as i do.

Cringe ain't the word for it.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Do you ever cringe, even just a little, when you read your old stories?

I have spent a little time over the last couple of days re-reading some of the crap I wrote back in 1999 - 2001. Wow! It's a lot worse than the crap I write today

Honestly, I read some of my old stories and just cringed. "Dang! I wrote that?" I remember writing it and thinking how good it was. Makes me wonder if in ten years I'll go back and read my stories from today and cringe again.

fucking hugely!

 

[TxRad]

fucking hugely!

[threadjack on/]

What are you doing in Spain? You can't write a decent fucking Winter story in Spain.

[Threadjack off/]

 

[Hypoxia]

I do not cringe (much) at my earliest stories. I sometimes look through them and admit I could have done better but I have no desire to revise them, except possibly to put BRIDE OF KONG together as a novella. I *do* re-read my not-earliest pieces and I rather like what I wrote. Call me a perv. Or call me a taxi.

 

[lovecraft68]

Very much so.

My first story here 'Almost Perfect' is very far from it. Its a grammatical nightmare and I use words over and over again that I have since learned to never use.

My grammar is still not the sharpest, but I look at that and see the vast improvement. At one point I thought about editing it, but then decided I like it there for that reason. to show how I have gotten better.

My hope is to always be able to do that. That in 2017 I can look at a 2015 story and say "I'm better at that now and ...."

Too bad readers never seem to notice the date of stories. I had one recently who commented on several stories I wrote in the last couple of years then on one from back in 2010 and they said "Wow, you must have really rushed this because its sloppy and unedited."

But I made the most of it and saw it as a positive as their remarks on all the other stories were good.

 

[oggbashan]

Do you ever cringe, even just a little, when you read your old stories?

I have spent a little time over the last couple of days re-reading some of the crap I wrote back in 1999 - 2001. Wow! It's a lot worse than the crap I write today

Honestly, I read some of my old stories and just cringed. "Dang! I wrote that?" I remember writing it and thinking how good it was. Makes me wonder if in ten years I'll go back and read my stories from today and cringe again.

Yes. My first stories were written long before joining Literotica and were mainly for Yahoo Adult fetish groups. They seem crude now, particularly Hen Party and Stag Party. I keep thinking 'I ought to rewrite or delete those' but I leave them posted as a reminder of how bad a writer I can still be.

My first erotic story, originally written on an early PC running CP/M with 5.25 floppy discs, is still beyond saving. I look at it from time to time and close the file with a headshake. What was I thinking when I wrote that rubbish?

 

[Hypoxia]

My first erotic story, originally written on an early PC running CP/M with 5.25 floppy discs, is still beyond saving. I look at it from time to time and close the file with a headshake. What was I thinking when I wrote that rubbish?

I started songwriting long ago, then compter programming, then tech writing and editing (on SWylbur), then BBSing and blogging (on CP/M), all long before I tried writing fiction. My first attempts were plays I never quite completed. My first non-verse non-tech non-play was a children's story I never finished.

The first I actually completed (around 1998) is posted here (revised) as XYZ Bomber Journal; the first version was commissioned for a now-defunct online magazine. It's not quite terrible. The next I started (around 2000) was the Bride of Kong screenplay that fermented for many years and finally emerged as a story. I had trouble with endings but I don't cringe (much) when I re-read it.

I'm glad I didn't try writing fiction, erotic or not, way back when. I didn't have enough stories in my head and I sure didn't have the chops to render them as entertainment. Sometimes writing is merely mental masturbation.

 

[49greg]

I did when I went back and read the first few, but don't do that now. I read them over after they get posted and that's it. And yes, have cringed at that point.

 

[oggbashan]

I started songwriting long ago, then compter programming, then tech writing and editing (on SWylbur), then BBSing and blogging (on CP/M), all long before I tried writing fiction...

I started computer programming in 1963.

My first fiction was written for school magazines, so my first published work was when I was 8 years old.

I spent decades writing reports, instruction manuals and specialised text books. My first published text book was in 1968.

I wrote some mainstream fiction for my own amusement and I entered some short story competitions (unsuccessfully) in the late 60s and early 70s. All are now lost because they were typed on a manual typewriter with a single carbon copy. The copies were lost in a house move. I don't regret losing them. They were bad...

 

[GoldenCojones]

I started computer programming in 1963.

Damn Ogg, I thought I was old, but I wasn't even born in 1963

 

[TxRad]

Damn Ogg, I thought I was old, but I wasn't even born in 1963

I graduated high school in 1964. Not quite up there with Ogg and I hope I never catch up.

 

[lovecraft68]

I spent decades writing reports, instruction manuals and specialised text books. My first published text book was in 1968.

I was born in 68

 

[oggbashan]

I was born in 68

I had been engaged twice by 1968...