Yes, there are works which have been published—-short stories, novels, non-fiction books that when I go back and look at them, I’m less than pleased. I see them as complete, as the tale told, as perhaps as much as I could wring out of it, wrung out, but I don’t always like it. I can detect something missing, some element that I didn’t know how to infuse, not in, that particular piece/project.
In many ways your work is like children, and there are aspects of your children that you don’t like or notice that don’t work or are dysfunctional. You can’t help but notice them because you’re constantly comparing one work to another, one idea to another—-not to try and trump your last idea but to find creativity, originality in this new project. The editorial process, yes, also gives far too much insight to one’s work.
Plus there’s the weight of time—-if you’re good and aiming to be better at the Art of Writing, you’ve progressed from rehashing ideas (mimicry—-generally 2000+ hours of writing) and graduated to finding your own Voice (which occurs in 5000–7500+ hours of writing). So I have works that have occurred in each of these “epochs” of my initial 10,000+ hours of initial writing (up until I was about 21); then I have writings that happened in what I would consider my 2nd Phase (college, advanced mentors—-10,000 to 20,000 hours) and there is a marked difference because what I knew in the 1st Phase is drastically different then what I did in the 2nd Phase. Which is even further different than 30,000 to 50,000 hours, my 3rd Phase, that included more teaching, more reading, deeper reading, being able to afford pretty much any books I wanted. Which brings me into my 4th to 5th Phases, which include having published over a hundred books—-fiction and non-fiction, 3500+ blogs and articles, plus thousands of pages of professional/technical writing.
So I have about 3–4 “epochs” of writing and each is vastly different.
I recently went back to the 10–15,000 “shelf” for a 125 unfinished manuscript and was able to in about 18 months turn it into a 700 page novel (Stay With Me, available on Amazon—-shameless plug) but what I can tell you about that work is that less of those 125 pages made it into the final manuscript—-maybe 25, because my work was so much less than what it is now—-twenty years later. It was a good idea/story, but the execution lacked the ability, skill, finesse, I’ve developed over the years since originally shelving it.
I didn’t engage it deeper then because I didn’t “like” it enough as it was, to engage. What I learned not only in characterization, but plotting, pacing, dialogue, was also an openness about identity, relationships, sexuality, and exploring that in my writing. I hadn’t matured enough to write such a mature, complex novel so (now) those initial pages struck me as deeply sophomoric.
Which translates yes, to some of my earliest work I’m often going through in my 12 Draft edits that I do, and if it’s from the past, enchancing it, or maturing it, if it’s unfinished work, or I’m smirking at it in magazines, chapbooks, even a collection of short stories. I can see my own levels. I can see clarity, burgeoning skill. But I can also see hesitation, lack of a more expansive word vault. Clunkier curves and spins of ideas.
What I’ve considered doing for a 3rd in a collection of short stories, is typing up my notes/inspiration on each story, to deconstruct and show the construction of the stories. I had started writing out my ideas about them when I was writing them in college, Phase 2, so I have immediate connections to those thoughts.
Writing, writing well, writing through multiple phases of thousands upon thousands of hours and pages, is often a wide, spanning rewriting, reiteration, reinvention of previous attempts at ideas, work, plots, characters. So the dislike of Kyle Iteration #2 writing is generally because I’m at Kyle Iteration #7 now and I can see all my own clumsiness, my hesitation, my limitedness.
But here’s the horrid part—-that’s sort of the same lens I use to see novice writers too.
Been there, done that, recognize it, because I’ve been there and done that.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
