Save them. As life changes and you change, you will find them interesting reading. They are a portrait of yourself when you wrote them. They are valuable texts, and never throw them away. When you are dead and gone, they will be vcalued by your loved ones, if no one else. It is important that you never throw your writings away.
Look at them again with a fresh perspective. Do they still make sense? Are you a wiser person now, who would say things differently. Some of my old stuff is really good. Some of it seems naive. The fact is, however, in my case, I am constantly learning and growing. So books I wrote four years ago, are now obsolete.
Go through them, see if there's anything worth keeping or printing and try to get them published. If not and if the writings have sentimental value, store them nicely away--just in case, years after your death, the world will have some of the first scribblings of an established author to auction off for historical reasons. I am a packrat so I never through anything away.
Never throw away old texts. Store them all and keep the files and hard prints. Also store the printed papers or magazines where your articles are published till you are dead. Hire storage space if it is too much for your own house.
Nowadays it is possible to launch your own website and publish your old things online. You will get some readers anyhow everyday and this will make you feel good as a writer.
Real devoted writers of the future will forget about narrowminded publishers, as I predict, and they will publish anything on their own personalized website to reach out to the whole world. It is sad to see how stupid we use the high tech internet nowaday, because it is so sophisticated and we use only ten percent of it’s capacity. Within ten years the speed of the internet will increase with 1000 000 percent. When so much capacity is wasted then also investment money is destroyed. We must develop more advanced ways of publishing books on the internet and to provide a living with it for the poor, lonely, forgotten and depressed writers.
For me it is such a sad feeling when an innocent tree must die to print a book of me. I save trees by publishing my stuff on my own website and get thousands of readers every month.   | | |
I recommend that you polish them -- polish, polish, POLISH! Then I suggest you research publications that "fit" the subject matter and submit, submit, SUBMIT!
When you read the biographies of many of the world's most popular writers, it's surprising how many of them were rejected by publishers (and how many TIMES they were rejected by publishers) before they sold that first manuscript. Tenacity counts for a lot in the writing game and, if you know -- deep down -- that what you have is GOOD, you should never give up the search!
Read 'em over and see if they truly do suck. If they don't, there's probably at least a story or two worth expanding on....
Hm, i dont know, what do you reckon? throw them away, well if you think they are outdated, you could do that, but a really good story is never old. there is always a possibility for rewrite, upgrade, and maybe you have the next best seller! Writing world is never predictable.
Read them over, decide if you WANT to share them, then find the people who focus on what you have to say, what your writing says.
I've actually revised a number of older projects which are in consideration as we speak.
Join a writers'group and read it out there, see what the reaction is. If the work is too dated: Read it at home, take a red pen and circle all the good thoughts and sentences that are in there.
Weave them into new material. Otherwise, regard it as a historic record, print it, bind it, date it, autograph it, and give it to someone who is interested in historic records!
All done now for today - going to lunch - I'll be BAAACK!
Find someone you trust with everything and listen to the feedback. Listen carefully. It may be what you hoped for. It may not be. Don't seek feedback until you are ready.
I have never had that problem, if I wrote it I share it.
I have a book partly filled with poems I wrote nearly 40 years ago and which I have shared with people a bit at a time. It's my belief that an artist or writer cannot begin to grow until they begin sharing their work with others. It also teaches you (hopefully) to grow a thick skin against criticism which is all part of being an artist regardless of the media within you which you decide to express yourself.
Well my wife made me throw mine away! And then when she saw that I was acutely making money off of it, then she said it was my fault for throwing them away. so what I recommend is hide them, go back every so often and read them, there might be something in them you want someone to hear in another story your working on. And remember when your husband, wife, or significant other tells you there tired of the paper, no your hidden stash is in danger!
Read it again - see if you think it is any good. Many times it isn't - sorry!!! |
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