Start a blog and post them up there. Tell a few of your friends to read it. Or say they aren't by you when you post them. Then you can get honest feed back and you won't feel so shy about it. When I'm shy about showing a story I have to ask myself if I believe in what I've written and if I love it. If I love it and believe it's great than showing people is like playing an instrument for the first time on stage. You might go off tune, but you'll never know your potential if you don't step on that stage.
Go through them, and see if there's something you like in it. There might be an idea worth salvaging.
Thicken up your skin and the3n dig 'em out of your drawers and closets and dust 'em off and go for it cause you can't take 'em with you if they ain't published. Whadda ya got to lose, a manuscript?
I have nothing from years ago.
Go back through them with a critical eye. What's worth preserving, what could be rewritten or tweaked and what's a complete loss? I have so many projects like that — plays, novels, scripts — that haven't gone anywhere. There is probably some worthwhile material mixed in with a lot of half-baked ideas or cornball concepts. Actually, "The Sum of My Parts" came out of a couple of uncompleted memoirs and "Au Naturel" grew out of the blogging I did when I was on Martha's Vineyard. You never know what will turn out to be valuable. Thanks to computers, it is much easier to save and access old material than it used to be, back in the days when you stuffed shelves with failed manuscripts or unfinished plays. Unfortunately, I have been doing this for so long that I still have hundreds of pounds of printed-out work that I will never look at again because I don't have the time or energy to scan it all into the computer. Something for the future biographers to sort through, I guess!
Gather the courage to go through it yourself and view it from a third person POV, judging your writing and trying to better it before showing it to friends.
Pull them out, make any revisions you see fit (remembering that your own voice has probably changed and matured, and that's OK), and show them to someone you can trust. Chances are they suck much, much less than you think they do. :-)
A former editor once gave me the most sage advice. "You cannot publish anything that you can leave in a drawer." My advice is to step outside of your comfort zone and go for it! Every successful author was once a nobody no one ever heard about. It could be your turn to make the pages of history.
Dig them out, read them, pick out the best elements, rework them, type them up, polish them, and if by then you're not proud enough of them to show them off, you're probably not cut out for this.
Start with close friends or family or even a professor. If you're not comfortable showing it to them, show it to a complete stranger, or put it out on a blog of some sort. Sometimes feedback from a stranger is easier to handle than feedback from people you know.
Join a group! If you do, you may feel more comfortable sharing with the people who will take you seriously. Writing groups are meant to encourage you and help you find your voice, find your path, and see what direction is best for you. Maybe nothing you wrote back then is worth a damn now, but just maybe there's something special hidden there. Maybe it's all amazing! You won't know unless you share.
Show someone. Really, pick a friend, pick an acquaintance, pick a stranger. Join a writing club. Don't ask for an opinion; let their reaction while they are reading it, and their comments and questions after they read it tell you what they think about it. Remember that nothing is totally good nor is anything totally bad. Instead of asking what overall impression your readers have, ask them what did not work and what did. Take their constructive advice about strengths and weaknesses of your writing or story to heart, read your work with a critical and hopefully distanced eye, but make your own changes where changes need to be made. Most of all, grow. Grow and have fun. Never crush your own dream. Everyone is a storyteller. Writing is just a way to communicate your stories. Let your imagination pour into your writing; let it tell its stories. Keep dreaming and keep telling; never give up or put aside. Write while it is fun.
Keep them. File them. Read them over. Maybe they'll spark a new idea. I'd say start fresh and move forward. You'll learn more that way. |
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