Random Writing Tips – Rewriting the same story

 

Twenty some years ago, I bought a book – probably at a library book sale – of the collected short stories of this author.  I can’t remember which author it was, but I’m pretty sure he had been active back in the 50’s and 60’s, and I think I’d read a few of his novels, so he wasn’t a complete unknown to me. 

About halfway through the book, I’m reading a story and thinking, I’ve read this before.  At first I figured it had been in some other collection, but then I realized that no, it was this collection like ten stories ago.  I forget exactly what the stories were, but it was something like these aliens arrive on Earth and there’s some misunderstanding with the first humans they meet.  All the names were different, and like one was set in Iowa with these blue-skinned humanoids aliens while the other was set in Florida with these purple dog aliens.  But the basic story was the same.  And then, another ten stories or so later, there was a third version of the story.  I believe, the book had a listing of where all these stories had been published, and I’m pretty sure the three appeared in different magazines over a period of five or six years.

I don’t know how frequently this happens to other writers, but often I’ll have an idea and the plot comes to a fork.  Sometimes, after some thought it is obvious that one fork is better than the other, but sometimes both options are equally good.  So I’ve written two, or more, stories from the same initial idea, but I always made them different stories.  Like someone could read them and see similarities, but they’d never be confused thinking they had already read one of them. 

At first, when I saw this well-known author doing something that seemed a bit shady, I felt a little betrayed.  I don’t know if the guy was desperate for money and needed to make a sale so he just quickly rewrote something, or if there was some aspect of the story that really spoke to him so he wrote new versions of it every few years as his skill improved.  It’s hard to say. 

I bring all this up because the constant jumbling of stuff in my head randomly brought back this memory.  And I realized that painters often paint the same thing multiple times to get the best version.  The same for photographers, and film makers, and artists of all kinds.  So why not writers?  Why shouldn’t we write the same story over and over again, honing our craft and getting the best version? 

It’s something I hadn’t really thought about before.  But now I think I might look up some of my earliest stories and rewrite them.  Just to see what my, hopefully, better skill can make of them.

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Image from Pixabay.

My writing plans for 2025

A couple months ago, I made a decision about my writing plans for 2025.  Part of my 2024 plans had been to post a story each month on my website, one each month on my Ko-fi profile, and one every other month on one of my blogs.  The ones on my website I would get the idea, write it, and post it that month, while the others were either new ones I could write in advance, or revised stories.  So that’s thirty stories, about half of which were new.  Turns out, between everything else going on in my life, meeting those goals took most of my writing energy and I barely had any to work on other projects.  So my plan had been to stop the monthly stories and just post stories on my blogs whenever I felt like it, and put all my focus on two big projects. 

The first project would be to finish up Lunar Dreams, which is a collection of essays I have on colonizing the moon.  I’ve been working on it for a year-and-a-half, but I’ll work on it for a month or so, and then decide to take it in a new direction.  Then I work on it for another month or so, and then decide to take it in a new-new direction.  And then after a couple of months, to take it in a revised-old-new direction.  But I think I’ve finally figured out where I’m going with it.  So I just need to hammer out a few details, and give it a good polish.  Once I finished that, then I would get around to finishing Volume One of The Pathfinder Saga.  This is two novellas and a short story.  The first novella I started … over ten years ago and is 90% done, but I originally wrote it to be a standalone story.  The second novella is 70% done, and I’ve barely started the short story.  I’ve tried working to update the first novella before, but my plan had been to work on it every Wednesday and Thursday and that didn’t turn out so well.  This is a fantasy story, and while I just “understand” scifi stuff like starships and hyperspace, I need to immerse myself in the story to keep how the magic works and what creatures can do what.  And just doing that a couple days a week wasn’t working.  My hope was by focusing on the setting for months at a time I’d finally finish it.

Then the election happened.  My plans had been made with the expectation that the country wouldn’t be driven off a cliff by lunatics.  Now I need to spend some of my writing energy fighting a fall into a fascist dystopia.

My current plan is to still write a story each month on my website.  Before, I’d come up with the story and write it that month, but I waived that self-imposed rule at the end of 2024, so I’m doing away with it entirely.  This is helpful, because as I type this up at the end of December, I already have the January and February stories mostly finished.  I just need to give them a good polish.  I also have another story where I already have the framework, I just need to fill it all out, which I’m having a bit of trouble with.  This was to be the January story, but now I’ll have a few more months to work on it.  In the past, some of these Monthly Stories had been of a political or social nature, but I’d also throw in some fun ones.  But going forward, they will probably all be of a political or social nature. 

As to Ko-fi, I’m keeping my account, but I’m not planning on posting much there.  The point of posting a story every month was to try to get some traction to maybe start making money there, but that didn’t happen.  Maybe in the future, we’ll see.

I also plan on posting a story each month on one of my blogs.  These will likely be revised stories, or maybe some new fun ones. 

In 2024 I posted over thirty stories and was a bit burned out.  I had planned on only posting a couple while “relaxing” working on my big projects.  And now I’m planning on posting at least twenty-four stories, finishing Lunar Dreams and making some headway on The Pathfinder Saga, while hoping the country doesn’t collapse.  I have the sinking suspicion that 2025 will end with me even more burned out.