(Cross-posted to LiveJournal)

I attended a meeting of the Democracy for America – Long Island group in Mineola on Wednesday night. Afterwards, a few of us went out to a diner, and the conversation digressed to personal stuff. One woman mentioned that she’d written a romance novel a few years back, but it was so long ago that she couldn’t remember what it was called. I felt a lot of sympathy for her—not only because she’d put all that effort into a book that had never been published (I know how that feels), but also because occasionally in the course of creativity, things get forgotten. Stuff was that incredibly important a few months or years back doesn’t seem so important now. And it’s a little sad to realize that. I could tell she felt kind of weird about it. Maybe not depressed, but wistful. I hadn’t liked her much before that, but I really empathized with her then (and she turned out to be a pretty nice person, too, so I’m glad I listened).

I encounter the same thing a lot in my own work, which has become somewhat voluminous and unwieldy. Every once in a while, I’ll pull out a notebook and find a poem I’d completely forgotten about, or a character sketch that seems totally new. Naturally, I’m not going to remember every single thing I’ve scribbled on a Post-It. Heck, just going through my wallet, I generally come across a dozen notes I’ve scrawled out and stuck in there so I didn’t forget (and instantly forgotten). Oh, and don’t ever ask me to list all the SPASMS I’ve done. I doubt I could come up with the titles of twenty, off the top of my head. They’ve never made the cut for inclusion in my long-term memory.

See, I’m not really a nostalgic person. Not that I can’t look at the past fondly, but I’m pretty firmly entrenched in whatever I’m doing at present, and when I’m not busy with that, I’m brainstorming on future stuff. The practical upshot of this is twofold: 1) I get a lot of stuff done and 2) I forget a lot. Not on purpose, it just sort of happens. I don’t discount the past, though. If it wasn’t for yesterday, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

The thing is, just because old creative stuff doesn’t seem that important anymore, or because it didn’t lodge in your head, doesn’t mean it didn’t—or doesn’t still—serve a purpose. Even if it’s total shit.

Rediscovering the past is interesting and useful. For one thing, looking over past works is a good way to measure how far you’ve come. Re-reading stories, I’m surprised sometimes at the progress I’ve made. Even over the past two years, I notice that my dialogue has improved, the pacing has tightened, and over-usage of certain phrases has decreased. I’m pleased. The work has paid off. I bet if anybody reading this who is actively working at their writing compares a story from three years ago to one they’ve written in the past few months, they’ll notice a significant change. (At least, I hope they do!)

So re-analyze your stories, or poems or music or art or whatever. Try to remember what you were thinking of when you made them, and why you made the choices you did. It’s a useful tool for marking progress, noting change, and hopefully patting yourself on the back for growing as an artist. Don’t concentrate on how awful it was or let it get you down for having been a bad writer/artist/etc., because you’ve almost certainly developed into a better one now.

For me, it’s also a great way to get new ideas, or an opportunity to improve on old ones. My story a while back, “The Too-Much-Noise Wizard,” is from a book I made when I was maybe four years old. I’ve always loved that title, and I finally crystallized it in a readable story, as opposed to a crayon scribbling.

I don’t look at my old stories too often. Nobody should. But every once in a while, it’s good to go back. Yesterday’s gone, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

xo, Amy