To Re-edit or not Re-edit?

[Guest]

I just re-edited a long story from last summer, "Five Classes of Submission". It was and currently is the top-rated story in the mind-control section (of course that will eventually change). Anyway, readers were obviously okay with the story, but when I gave it a re-read I found little formatting mistakes, or sentences that no longer sounded right to my ear, etc. So I went in and made corrections, which are up now. Probably no one will even notice the difference, which raises this question for me:

How many other authors find that some parts of a story (the flow of the language, rather than the action itself) no longer sound or feel "right" after some time has gone by, and do you give it an edit or just leave things be? And when you learn something new about writing (the threads here in the forum on "how to describe a nipple", or "how men want women described", might spark some more enlightened way of conveying a part of an earlier story, for example), do you just apply the new knowledge to the next story, or go back and give an older piece the better treatment that you didn't understand before?

 

[cloudy]

I leave the older stories alone, as bad as they seem to me now.

It's a way to gauge my growth as a writer.

 

[J.Doe]

Always present your best work to the public.

Re-edit your story, but keep a copy of it in your private files. Having a history of a story is an invaluable tool for an author to include in their writing skills box.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I just re-edited a long story from last summer, "Five Classes of Submission". It was and currently is the top-rated story in the mind-control section (of course that will eventually change). Anyway, readers were obviously okay with the story, but when I gave it a re-read I found little formatting mistakes, or sentences that no longer sounded right to my ear, etc. So I went in and made corrections, which are up now. Probably no one will even notice the difference, which raises this question for me:

How many other authors find that some parts of a story (the flow of the language, rather than the action itself) no longer sound or feel "right" after some time has gone by, and do you give it an edit or just leave things be? And when you learn something new about writing (the threads here in the forum on "how to describe a nipple", or "how men want women described", might spark some more enlightened way of conveying a part of an earlier story, for example), do you just apply the new knowledge to the next story, or go back and give an older piece the better treatment that you didn't understand before?

I re-edit, and sometimes. re-write completely. I just did, as a matter of fact!

I only keep an early version if the content was heavily modified; if it's formatting and grammar I don't bother.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Ghost

Guess it's horses for courses. I think that if you go back and don't like your grammar, punctuation and typos, there's nothing wrong in doing a 'clean-up' proofread if that rocks your boat.

Changing plot and character seems pointless to me. Better to put the early work down to experience, as Cloudy said, and move on. A new story is much more fun than revisiting past bloopers. IMHO