{"id":134,"date":"2013-01-13T06:29:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T06:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/2013\/01\/13\/write-em-and-forget-em-or-i-almost-never-re-read-my-works\/"},"modified":"2013-01-13T06:29:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T06:29:00","slug":"write-em-and-forget-em-or-i-almost-never-re-read-my-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/2013\/01\/13\/write-em-and-forget-em-or-i-almost-never-re-read-my-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Write ‘Em And Forget ‘Em: Or, I Almost Never Re-Read My Works"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

I know I am not alone in this, and yet, it feels weird to talk about. As a published author I am very proud of my achievements and what I’ve managed to accomplish in over three months – but I have a confession. The moment I hit “Publish” on a work, I will probably never read through it again.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Heck I don’t know. Call it fear.<\/p>\n

When I flip through my book downloaded from Amazon to make sure it published in the correct format, or flip through my paperback just to say I can, I almost never let me eyes linger on the words, let alone read <\/i>them. There’s a lot of rationalization for this, but it mostly boils down to I don’t want to make any more changes. <\/i><\/p>\n

From the time I hit “THE END” on a work, I will read through its entirety about ten times before it’s published. This doesn’t count all the smaller bits I’ll read on their own, or the re-reading I do during the course of writing the first draft. (Yes, I edit as I go. GASP.) I’m also very particular about editing. Even my novelettes I’ve been publishing in the past month get a lot chopped from them….I believe about one-thousand words is the norm, and that’s BEFORE they’re sent to outside editing. Up until the last minute before I publish, I will chop off prepositional phrases, flip through a thesaurus because that word is “still not quite right”, and flip back and forth between using a name or a pronoun in certain sentences. I know I’m done editing and ready to publish when, not only do I have editor and beta go-ahead, but my editing is no longer moving forward, but sideways. Thus when I flip through a story after it’s been published, bought by dozens+ of people, reviewed, shared, etc, I just don’t want to face the fact that maybe there’s something left to change. <\/i><\/p>\n

As artists, we are rarely satisfied with our work. And sometimes we’re afraid of what we may see.
<\/i>
I know most of my faults as a writer. I’ve been seriously writing for about 15 years now. The first novella I published was not the first book I ever wrote…certainly not even in the top 10. Maybe <\/i>the top 20 of completed novels. I’ve done my dances of “OH EW I WROTE -THAT?-” over the years So when I re-read, it’s not all about cringing and wondering how anyone in the world could possibly give it five stars…but it is a part of it. And as publishers, we’re taught that once it’s out in the world, it’s out. Short of glaring typos and a few minor things (that may add up to big things) on a technical level, I’m a believer that once it’s out, it’s OUT. No more changes, no more humming, just publish it and work on the next one. Which makes it kind of awkward when I think there’s a scene I might want to refresh myself on because it relates to one I am writing.<\/p>\n

What about you, other writers? Do you ever go back and re-read your works? Does it make you cringe,even if you wrote it two months ago?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know I am not alone in this, and yet, it feels weird to talk about. As a published author I am very proud of my achievements and what I’ve managed to accomplish in over three months – but I have a confession. The moment I hit “Publish” on a work, I will probably never… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[153,58,152,73,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-becoming-an-author","category-rants-and-raves","category-reading","category-self-publishing","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRtqI-2a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}