Time for our monthly meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Hosted as ever by Alex J. Cavanaugh, the aim of the group is to offer a safe space where writers can share doubts and insecurities without fear of being judged. This month's co-hosts are J Lenni Dorner, Victoria Marie Lees and Sandra Cox.
This month's optional IWSG question is: Many writers have written about the experience of rereading their work years later. Have you reread any of your early works? What was that experience like for you?
I fear this question will show up how disorganised I am. My earliest work is many laptops and computers ago, and I've never been very good at backing stuff up (still not, although it helps that nowadays the process is largely automated). So unless I did some deep digging into ancient emails I don't even have my old work to go over and laugh about. If I did, I'm sure it would feel like reading someone else's work. I do remember the tone of those books, and my style has evolved vastly (thankfully) and it's a completely different genre than what I now focus on. A lot of crime/thriller stuff as I read a lot of those sort of books at the time, but I realised it's not my forte.
As for the present day, I'm still sketching out my parallel universe-based WIP, and "sketching" is a good way to describe it as I've been jumping about in the story, leaving placeholders and making broad brushstrokes, with a lot of stuff taking place in different universes and metapysical realms. This is definitely different to how I used to write early on as I would edit at the same time as writing and do a lot of work on scenes before moving on. I'm less precious about that stuff now and I'm fine about just getting down vague impressions that can be improved on later. Apart from that, I've recruited some beta readers for my previously completed book and anxiously awaiting their feedback while trying not to suffer imposter syndrome from critiquing their wonderful work.
Of course, as ever you can find other entrants to the IWSG at the sign-up list. Have you read back over your early work?
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