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The awesome co-hosts for the February 4 posting of the IWSG are J Lenni Dorner, Victoria Marie Lees, and Sandra Cox!
February 4 question - 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?A few years ago, I pulled out an old handwritten notebook and started typing the story I had written in it. My debate was- do I keep it as is, or punch it up for modern times? It's a YA story, set in the 90's because that's when I wrote it. Half the plot dissolves to dust if a decade of tech is added to the story. Two major conflicts are resolved with the popularity of mobile phones and the existence of caller ID. (Actually, caller ID coming to my area was why I originally gave up on the story. Because, seriously, as soon as the MC knows the caller, the story moves to the closing resolution pretty quickly.)
{Yes, kids, there was a time when we had to just answer phones with no idea who was on the other end. Or we used answering machines to screen calls, because unlike voicemail, you could hear the message as it was being left and opt to pick up the phone. And yes, that's why the old people leave you three-minute messages, because you might pick up... even though there are barely any answering machines left.}
Obviously, there are new workarounds since I started typing the story, new ways to mask numbers, or disposable phones. So I could go back to that story, again, now, and update everything.
But it makes me curious what another five or ten years will offer, what other new plot points might deepen the story as technology changes everything again. She could spend three-quarters of the story thinking it's an AI bot calling her! (Laugh if you want, but I had a bot texting me this month and didn't know until last week that it wasn't a human. Because why would a bot text me at 1am? Why??? Because the programmer is an idiot and the bot isn't supposed to be doing that. 🙈🫢)
Anyway, I have three other stories on my plate right now. And I spend wayyyy too much time on medical drama and whatnot, and not nearly enough on actual writing.
(For friends and those who read last month's IWSG post-- Dad is back home. He's doing well. Heart surgery went great. My uncle had my dad all worried that there were five other procedures and problems, but no, my dad did not have the same issues as my uncle or their father. Dad's was a fairly routine fix, the surgery was less than six hours, and his hospital stay wasn't even a week.)
(For friends and those who read last month's IWSG post-- Dad is back home. He's doing well. Heart surgery went great. My uncle had my dad all worried that there were five other procedures and problems, but no, my dad did not have the same issues as my uncle or their father. Dad's was a fairly routine fix, the surgery was less than six hours, and his hospital stay wasn't even a week.)
