March IWSG Day Question: Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?
Over the years, I’ve written several stories (both short and book-length), and for various reasons, I set them to one side never to go back to them.
Time passes…
Voices of one of those abandoned projects begin to cry out to me…
Please tell my story.
Complete me so I can rest in peace.
Finish what you’ve started so that the world may know what happened.
Someone somewhere need to hear this.
Come back to me.
Eventually, I give in.
I have to.
These voices give me no choice; just an ultimatum.
Write, or completely lose my mind.
Or, my soul.
Both are bad in my opinion.
The challenges?
Choosing which one to pick up and continue.
And…
How should this particular story end?
Especially since I may not have set eyes on it for a number of years. I find that I have to get to know the character(s) all over again (which isn’t necessarily a terrible thing). I enjoy rediscoveries. Sometimes I look at a story and ask myself-what was I thinking of when I wrote this? Was I possibly possessed????
Nah, someone else wrote this one. Couldn’t be me.
Then slowly, the memories return as well as the excitement.
I pick up the pen, and begin once more.
*To answer the question above…I am currently working on an old story with the hope of one day finding a “home” for it.
A writer & her adolescent muse 
When I go through old manuscripts, I often wonder if I actually wrote them, or if my cat was just running back and forth across my keyboard.
But I’ll figure out all those old stories eventually. And with a little luck, I’ll be a better writer when that time comes.
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I often wonder if cats are our secret muses 🙂
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I do that too, where I go back and read something I wrote and it’s much more amazing than I remember it. Most of the time I set it aside because I think it’s garbage, so it’s nice to go back to it and realize it’s better than I thought. 😀
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Isn’t it amazing how time away from a particular writing gives you a fresh perspective?
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Most definitely! 😀
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Awesome!
It is exciting to delve back into the lives of characters that still linger in your mind.
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It sure is! 🙂
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That’s awesome that you’re working on rewriting something new right now. I feel like my characters call to me like that, too.
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🙂
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Go figure. This is literally what I’m doing right now – I’ve pulled out a really old story, and reworked it. It’s the time travel serial running on my WP blog. It was originally written from 2000-2004. Dusted off in 2005. Then 2006. Then 2008. It was finally finished in 2009. Then re-edited in 2014. Then I started running it on my serial blog in 2015. I completed a set of edits in 2016 to re-work the (upcoming) ending.
Did it work out? Well… I like it. I’ve maybe managed a dozen people who agree over the last two years. Part of the issue is the beginning is weak, but I’ve reworked it so many times that I just can’t any more, and I can’t convince people to start at Book 3. The vague new plan is an in-continuity relaunch, much like “Doctor Who”, but that’s harder to do in writing. FWIW, I’ve actually been tracking ALL major edits (from 2000 to now) in Commentary entries (Author Aside posts on that same site) if anyone’s real curious about changes.
That’s not to say it hasn’t happened with other works. Generally, it’s been a NaNoWriMo that’s caused me to pull out something unfinished, and spin it into a complete story in a month’s time. Otherwise, the characters behave themselves. I think part of it is, I rarely start their story unless I know there’s a good chance of me finishing it. Some day. I hope your story manages to find a new home!
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Thank you 🙂 I also have two serials on the side that I really need to get back to as well. They’re (characters) annoying the heck out of me at the moment 😉
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