So you are a writer. You’ve been writing for some time now and Hatrack critics have generously aided you in perfecting your art. You’ve submitted some for publishing and you’ve have had either good luck or bad luck -- nevertheless you ARE a writer and have produced many stories to prove it.
So what happened to all those stories? Are they just forgotten? Trashed? Archived? Or are you constantly tweaking them as your writing skills improve?
Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :
A little bit of all of the choices.
Posted by pixydust (Member # 2311) on :
Not "trashed" or "fogotten". Most are in the revision, subbing, or inspiration-for-later stage.
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
My unpublished stories are almost all still in the market.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Shoved in the file cabinets behind me as I write this. After a point, it's better to move on than to keep tweaking, though I do revisit old ideas from time to time.
(We're talking thirty-two years worth of stuff here. It fills up one whole file cabinet and a good chunk of the other.)
Posted by Antinomy (Member # 5136) on :
Like sons and daughters, they’re all my creations that I keep safely tucked away. Numbering around 60 or so, not including WIPs, it would be devastating if they were lost or destroyed. I visit with them from time to time, and while there is always a chance to be published, I think of them as my legacy.
Posted by tigertinite (Member # 4803) on :
My creations are works in progress, most of my pieces are tweaked constantly, or as often as I re read them. . . My short stories, some of them have been published, the others were given as gifts and forgotten(aka no longer edited) As I say to my english teachers. . . I'm so much better on the rewrite.
Posted by Alethea Kontis (Member # 3748) on :
Cannibalized. (Was that an option?)
The writing may be "old me", but the ideas are often still very good, and completely usable in other novels/stories/whathaveyou.
Posted by ArachneWeave (Member # 5469) on :
I have childhood manuscripts which are fun keepsakes, but going nowhere. I'd estimate I'm off-again-on-again tweaking about five finished products. I have more dormant ones lying around. I'm working on a story right now that I finished the first draft and thought "trash". But I set it aside a few weeks and am now writing a whole new POV in to add depth, and it may not be a dead loss after all.
The only stories I don't have that I've written are two novel drafts I lost accidentally. It was a long time ago, and is just as well.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Well, I kept carbon copies of everything---they're part of the bulk. You guys have heard of carbon paper, haven't you?
Posted by goatboy (Member # 2062) on :
What Alethea said. They are eaten like the mantis eats it's mate.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :
Robert: What a charming visual! It must be satisfying to have a physical copy of all your work; almost makes me want to tax my printer and get everything in hard copy.
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
Doesn't everybody keep a hard copy of everything?
Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :
No, don't keep hard copies necessarily, but sometimes.
Electronic copies, though, I'm a packrat. I have a local copy, a backup on an external drive, and with stuff that's really important and I don't have time to backup - I email it to myself. (making sure to email the account that stores the mail on a central server rather than the one that downloads my mail to my computer...in case of catastrophic computer failure, which I have experienced in the past.)
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
You've gotta realize...I'm from the old-fashioned era. It's nearly all typewriter-written. I didn't get a word processor till the early nineties and a computer till the late nineties. I've got rough drafts, final copies, and assorted notes. (There was a period where I sent out the first draft: the less said about that the better.)
Right now, I generally write a rough draft, print that out, type up a second draft based on that (it goes much faster the second time around), then paste that into a file and fiddle with it till I'm done---then print out that and send it to market, if I'm satisfied.
(There are some notable absences from my files. I mostly didn't bother to print up my Internet Fan Fiction at all, and what I did print up is in a different box.)
(making sure to email the account that stores the mail on a central server rather than the one that downloads my mail to my computer...in case of catastrophic computer failure, which I have experienced in the past.)