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.
***
Image from Pixabay.
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