Would you throw it away?

[zeldas_lullaby]

You're welcome!!

[Ventis]

I suppose it's a matter of effort, too. Tossing old clothes that take up closet space is one thing, as you may need the space. My new disc is about 3% full and maybe in 5 years it will be twice that. And deleting an old file takes effort, as keeping it in a "misc" folder takes no added effort -- more work is required for me to delete old files than to keep them.

You keep repeating the argument about the space, but I really don't understand what that has to do with anything.

I don't toss the old, useless junk away because I need more space. I toss it away because it's old, useless junk. More space doesn't change the nature of the junk nor does it justify its existence. I wouldn't keep it if I had a palace full of empty rooms and closets. And I won't keep useless bits of old or bad writing, even though I have a lot of free space on my hard drive.

And I don't see those two seconds that it takes to select a part of the story I don't like and hit 'delete' as an effort. Or to deelete a file. In fact, selecting a part you don't like (like that snippet of dialouge, for example), hitting 'copy', creating a new doc, hitting 'paste', naming and saving the doc seems a much bigger effort to preserve a piece of junk... it must take all three seconds longer.

So if you don't want to toss your old writing away, then don't. If you can use it years later, more power to you. But please don't assume that's the "correct" way and that everyone should feel the same.

[kaykay1216]

I would never delete what I have written. When I write, I just keep writing. If I don't like how the story turns, I revise it the best I can. I know that I will be able to find a way to make my story seem good enough to my opinion if I continue to work on it.

[moderntimes]

Er, Ventis, somewhere you seem to find that I've told everyone to do something. I don't recall having done that. I was just describing my own mode of handling stuff that I've written previously that I don't think I need. Nowhere did I say that you or anyone else needed to save things. I just spoke of the advantages of keeping things that may sometime be helpful. I've found this of value to me.

I also described that when I worked for a newspaper, it was mandatory to not toss any copy, for legal purposes. And years later, as a researcher, saving scientific data is critical per the inherent rules of the scientific method. You never toss away data because all acquired data is valid and cannot be discarded. Maybe these two enterprises led me into the habit of saving all my old writing, maybe it's just because I'm lazy.

Incidentally, I do "delete" a bad sentence or wrongly spelled word or something of zero use. I however do keep previous edited versions of incidental chapters in my novels or segments of my short stories or articles that I deem less effective than the newer versions, and I've often remembered a certain turn of phrase or sequence that could be salvaged for a later insertion. Happens all the time to me.

But I'm a very fast writer -- habit acquired during my newswriting days -- and I'll often tear through a few pages of text, quickly jamming the ideas from my fevered brain onto the electronic page as fast as I can type -- which is pretty fast. I then contemplate what I've written later, after the burst of energy. Some writers are however contemplative as they write for the first draft, and take more time to evaluate their words as they pen them, and therefore their initial writing is more studied and likely more "useful" in the long run. Myself, I will often conversely have hundreds of words that gushed forth and were saved, then I'll go back and restructure and revise them.

So via my personal writing habits -- tear through the manuscript in a burst of energy and then revise later -- I end up with lots of chaff on the (electronic) page that's been saved in a rough draft of, say, chapter 15, which then goes for rewrite. When you're working on deadline (newswriting), you learn to dash through a first draft and send it for edit, the revise in the second pass, after your line editor gets finished blue-lining the copy.

You're likely the other type of writer -- neither is better than the other, just different -- where you are more thoughtful and creative as you write, slower to commit to page, and therefore, as follows logically, you have less chaff and more wheat on the page than do I, first pass.

[MaySage]

I never throw anything away - literally, nothing. Call me a hoarder, but there is about a hundred notebooks at my mother's house, back from when I was ten. I have revisited a lot of my stories and while some just make me smile indulgently, I've also found some great things to incorporate into my current stories!

[Katjafatima]

Occasionally I meet my uncle for drinks and he, an accomplished Spanish writer gives me, the aspiring writer advice. Recently he made a comment, we should write, and put it away. Coming back to edit it on the days when we find ourselves with writers block.
I truly believe everything we write has potential. Sometimes we just need to put a greater amount of work into refining it.

-- 20 Jun 2015, 13:25 --

Occasionally I meet my uncle for drinks and he, an accomplished Spanish writer gives me, the aspiring writer advice. Recently he made a comment, we should write, and put it away. Coming back to edit it on the days when we find ourselves with writers block.
I truly believe everything we write has potential. Sometimes we just need to put a greater amount of work into refining it.

[Eyre-thee-well]

I never throw anything away - literally, nothing. Call me a hoarder, but there is about a hundred notebooks at my mother's house, back from when I was ten. I have revisited a lot of my stories and while some just make me smile indulgently, I've also found some great things to incorporate into my current stories!

I have done the same thing! Still have notebooks from high school creative writing classes. And I agree that there is still some good stuff in there. Sometimes it is just a character that I never fully developed, or a plot that is the seed for a great story. I have even uncovered some clever metaphors (high fives to my sixteen year old self) that still hold up. Most of it doesn't seem useful, but I am often surprised at some of my creativity back then. It also shows me how much I have grown and changed as a writer.

[skylarharkless]

No, never be afraid to rewrite it. I probably won't throw it completely away. Save it somewhere in your files so that you'll have it for later on (a different story, or different chapter, or just for memory's sake), but if you are not happy with it currently, it is best to start over. Editing it isn't a bad idea, though, you could always add or take away unnecessary context without completely erasing it. I believe that writers are inevitable editors, and we should not be afraid to push that backspace button. However, we are our worst critics as well, which can lead to the abuse of our backspace button. You just need to know what fits into your manuscript, and what does not, and go from there.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Deep thoughts, skylar. Thanks for sharing and welcome to the forum!!

[Barney56]

Once..I was very depressed and got very drunk..took my poems onto the balcony of my flat, put 'em in a bin and set fire to them..now I keep every bit of drivel I scribble..and go back to it another time to see if I can do anything with it.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Wow, setting it on fire! That's extreme.

(We've probably all been there...)

[1ChiGeek]

I save everything. You can always use it later.

[moderntimes]

I save everything. You can always use it later.

Agreed. Storage on a modern computer is trivial for documents. My little Kindle has the complete Shakespeare, all of James Joyce, maybe 40 novels, etc. To delete or discard older stuff is just petulant and bespeaks a 19th century artist rant.

In my own writing I've saved ALL the story ideas in a "misc ideas" file, and I've found ways to use these things to blend into my novels. And recently I sold all 3 of my private detective novels for publication, and they contain quite a few "wasted" ideas which were in fact not wasted at all.

So yeah, save everything. You never know.

[ae_whitworth]

I have recently jumped into that endless pool of writers, because I felt "moved" to. But I did start out writing one thing and ended up writing something else. I've done this several times, but I never throw it away, or worse, hit delete. I find a point in the writing where I veered off and simply start another project. I have the beginnings of two short stories, one self-help whatever, a few essays, and the novel I actually started writing. There are days I can't write a thing, and days it overflows. But I just do what my head and hands say to do, and try to stay out of my own way. If you make a "wrong turn" in your writing just take it, you never know where the road goes until you get there. Lock the directions in your "writing GPS", you don't know when you want to take that side road again. Worse case? Print it out, put it in a manila folder (yes, paper!), forget about it for a while, you'll find it when you need to, or it needs you to.

[sphillips44]

I wouldn't completely throw it away. I would leave it for a little while and if I thought a re-write was necessary, I would begin a re-write, but leaving the original. Sometimes with re-writing I like to go back and read what I wrote before and see where my improvements could be made.