Leave It in the Past

Many of the writers I have met can't stop tinkering with their stuff. They write something, revise it over and over, edit it for a nice polish, and then submit it to publishers. But every time they get rejected and their piece comes back, they revise it again. Sometimes it is little things like changing a word in a sentence. Sometimes it's major changes like nearly rewriting the whole thing.

But when I look elsewhere, like in comics, I don't see that. In fact, I see stories people saying that, though they are tempted to go back to their old work and make it better, they should leave it in the past. So what's the difference between these two groups of writers that one of them is constantly changing their works and the other is not?

My first thought is publication. When a comic gets put online, it is there for everyone to see. Although it doesn't have as much clout as being printed by a large company, it is still published. If a person's submission hasn't been published, then it is still free to modify as desired to make it better.

As much sense as publication makes, it doesn't answer all the questions. After all, several published books have multiple iterations, each new version slightly different from the other. As such, the fact that a piece of writing has been published does not make it sacred and untouchable.

So what is the reasoning for revising your old works anyway? I have found that there are three reasons it is generally done. It either corrects wrong information, adds new information, or changes the writing style to reflect what the author now sounds like. All three of these irk me.

If you have wrong information in your writing, you did a bad job writing and you had a bad editor who missed them. If you need to add new information, then I think you wrote your piece too early before all of the critical facts are in. If your writing doesn't have a degree of timelessness, I think it is lacking. As for changing your writing style, I find that the worst offender because it is like changing history.Your writing is a picture of who you are and what you think when you wrote it. When your piece is finished, the picture is taken and it doesn't need to be touched up. It belongs to history.

As you may have guessed, I lean to the side that says you should leave your past work in the past. On top of everything I said above, the best reason to do so is because of the future. If you spend all of your time making your old stuff look better, you're never producing any new stuff. All of that creative energy, development, insight, and new style is being wasted. If nobody has seen your work yet, feel free to revise and edit it as needed. But once it is done, especially once it's been published, leave it in the past.