Why You Need to Leave Your Past Work Alone

(Artwork by Violet_Lim on Pixabay)

I am privileged to be part of a tiny chat group with my two closest friends. They’re both very creative. One does fun, amazing artwork at the back of pantries and the like along with knitting fantastic hats (I have three of them) and writing period romance. The other is a wonderfully generous writer and editor as well as jewelry maker, painter, knitter etc. They both do more than I can fit into this post.

But on top of all of that, they’re also readers. Avid readers. Which makes me a little shy when sharing what I write. They’re my ideal audience but they’re also a very experienced audience. They read and they write!

So when one of my friends posted a photograph of two of my titles that she’d just purchased in paperback, my little tummy did a flip.

I wasn’t just worried that she was reading something I’d written. I was also worried because she was reading something I’d written ten years ago.

The Experience Gap

We should always be learning. I feel that’s true of life, but it’s especially true of your creative life. The more you learn, the more that what you create can reach its full potential and the higher you can aim.

But that naturally means that when you look back on what you created in the past, you can see the things that could have been better. In fact, they’ll probably jump out at you and glare. Which leaves plenty of room for the Inner Critic to start wanting to whitewash your backlist.

Every time you learn something, something good that will improve what you do moving forward, there will always be the chance that you’ll look back and go, “Ah, now I would do that differently.”

But I’m here to warn you: don’t try to fix things you created in the past. Improve forward. Why?

Well, I’ll let my Creativity tell you why.

Where Does Change End?

I love learning new things. I hate looking backwards. (Metaphorically, that is. I do love walking backwards, especially balancing hot toast and glacé cherries on my head, because I’m really good at it and there’s so little competition.) If the new thing I can learn will mean the Inner Critic gets free rein to study past productions, then I don’t wanna learn!

Because, ultimately, where does it end?

Can you imagine going into your mother’s box of prized possessions, pulling out your childhood drawings, taking your alcohol markers, and drawing over the top of them?

Two things happen.

Well, three things happen, but let’s focus on the two things first.

One, you don’t make the drawing better, because you’re drawing markers over crayon and everything just goes completely wrong. So you end up with a hot mess and neither a presentable piece of childhood art or an identifiable piece of adult art. You’ve ruined something important and created something pointless. Your mother is not going to pin that on her fridge or mirror or radiator or family album or sock drawer any time soon.

Two, you irrevocably ruin something precious. Because past art is precious. It shows where you came from. It reveals your interests, both art-wise and subject-wise, and perhaps spelling-wise (because let’s face it, we all have our preferences when it comes to C, K, and Q. Do we really need all three? How about Kween Kreativity? Doesn’t that look like a trend we should be following?).

Past creative products, be they art, stories, music, pottery (if you didn’t get to try it in school and create something rather rounded and squat that your mother could use as as…well, as a pencil holder or dust collector or something, then you need to go find a pottery class and make some kind of artifact ASAP), etc. all contribute to a picture of who you were and how you became who you are.

And actually, past creative products create joy. You enjoyed making them at the time and the people you shared those products with enjoyed treasuring them.

The danger is, if you start wanting to rewrite/redo your past efforts, not only will you likely destroy those lovely things, but you’ll also endanger your current and future projects.

Because where does it end?

If you’re going to continue to learn, then why not wait until you’ve read this book about dialogue or colour theory or photographic composition (that’s a thing right? I didn’t imagine it? I mean, I could totally imagine something like this, but I believe at least one someone else has imagined it also, right?) or the ultimate guide to stand up comedy before you actually do anything new? Why not learn all the things and then create something?
If you think like that, you’ll create nothing at all.

The best training is to create. Take the bits of information that you do know, make a thing, and learn by doing. Then find another bit of information and rinse and repeat (and blow dry, why does everyone forget the blow dry of that equation?).

Because, there’s the problem of number three. (Do you remember the mention earlier when I said three things happen?) If you try to ‘fix’ your past creations, your Creativity (who created those things for you in the past and who wants to create new things right now and in the future) will be heartbroken. Your Creativity did the very best they could do at that point in time. Attempting to update and change and ‘fix’ that expression is the equivalent of wiping your Creativity’s efforts out of existence.

It’s not worth it.

Don’t do it.

And if you need a final why, I hand back to Jessica to finish her story.

Your Creation Deserves to Survive

So back to my friend who purchased my older books. Stories I’d written over ten years ago.
I held my breath as she started reading my short story “The Red Umbrella.”

I expected silence as my friend worked her way through my old words and then quietly set my story aside to do something more important.

What I got was a thrilled reader who started quoting dialogue back to me that I’d totally forgotten I’d written.

She loved the character of Hans and his wise words (some of which came from my own expat experience) and she laughed at an anecdote I also had no memory of including (about an eighty-year-old pregnant woman…you have to read the story to understand).

Her response at the end of the story was “I love this so much. It will live in my heart.”

Then my other friend chimed in that she “adored” “The Red Umbrella,” which I hadn’t realised.

If I were going to go back and rewrite a published story, it would have been the introduction to “The Red Umbrella.” My friends’ reactions reminded me to leave it alone.

Our past creations deserve to survive. They deserve to exist and bring joy while we go on to create new things—always learning and improving forward.

What about you? Have you see the joy your past creations have brought to others? Have you enjoyed a creator’s early work?