In lieu of actual content...

So, I was looking through my old files last night, bits and pieces of stories I started years ago, and -

Man. I have improved.

I don't know why this amazes me so. I've been practicing, on and off - mostly on - for the last twelve years, even if I only have evidence from the last six or so. But my stuff from five, three, two years ago - hell, even a year ago -

- It's purely cringeworthy now.

Less on the individual sentence level - although it's cringeworthy there, too, I assure you - than in plot, character, worldbuilding, and all the little ways those individual sentences fail to make up a meaningful, or decent, whole.

I'm nowhere near good, or even good enough...

But I'm better. And in five or ten years' time, I'll be better still.

#

For the amusement value, I reproduce hereunder some opening passages from my earlier efforts to tell a story.

( From about 2000 )

2000: it feels so long ago. I hadn't the slight clue, but I thought I was the shit.

I did finish this. 12,000 words of demons, and people running around in confusion which was a reflection of authorial confusion and ignorance, and swordfights, and sieges, and Then Everyone Died, The End, because I didn't know how to finish it any other way.

I appear to have misplaced the complete 40,000 word not-a-novel I spent the year of my Junior Cert - 2002 - working on. This is probably not an entirely bad thing.

( From about 2003/4 )

This one made it to 80,000 words before I realised I had no idea what it was about, and the logic errors had become too glaring to ignore. It reads like a really bad cross between Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings, and if that sounds screwed-up and confusing, well. It was.

( From 2004/2005 )

This one is an attempt to rewrite the previous one to have it actually make sense. I spent the better part of six months, on and off, at that rather futile past-time, before the Leaving Cert came along and hit me upside the head.

( Also from about 2004/2005 )

This one... Despite what the prose might suggest, it wasn't actually too bad. It certainly never progressed far enough to become appallingly confused, thanks to the Leaving. Maybe I'll revisit it some day.

Well, I was fond of it, anyway.

( From 2005 )

2005: You don't want to know how tangled in my own plots and counterplots I ended up with this one. Unfinished and has been cannibalised for characters: I didn't know what I was doing, and worse, didn't know what I wanted to be doing. Dragons, kings, succession troubles, regencies, witchfinders - I threw everything in, and I had no idea how to make it fit together into a coherent sum-of-its-parts, much less a whole. :)

I did like the characters, though. I'll be using them, sometime.

( From about 2005/2006 )

2006: I'd figured out what a sentence is supposed to be doing. Making it work consistently was - and is - still a hit-and-miss proposition. Plotwise, though, I tried to get too complicated too quickly, and ended up tangling myself up what I thought was my own cleverness. And then, of course, I managed to get tangled up in college and bad brain chemicals before I got more than 25K words straight.

But I do have plans to go back.

( Also from 2006, but later in the year )

Apart from this passage and a couple of other paragraph-y bits, this one doesn't exist yet. But I am determined that it will. It has gods and dragons and megalomania and rebellion and sorcery and siblings who become enemies and then need to reconcile for the greater good. I'm currently trying not to be seduced by its promises, in order to actually finish what I'm working on now. :)

( And this is what I'm working with now: )

Not brilliant, by any means, but better than I was even two years ago. And I was still in love with it this morning.

Yeah, I have to laugh at myself, sometimes. :)

In lieu of actual content...

So, I was looking through my old files last night, bits and pieces of stories I started years ago, and -

Man. I have improved.

I don't know why this amazes me so. I've been practicing, on and off - mostly on - for the last twelve years, even if I only have evidence from the last six or so. But my stuff from five, three, two years ago - hell, even a year ago -

- It's purely cringeworthy now.

Less on the individual sentence level - although it's cringeworthy there, too, I assure you - than in plot, character, worldbuilding, and all the little ways those individual sentences fail to make up a meaningful, or decent, whole.

I'm nowhere near good, or even good enough...

But I'm better. And in five or ten years' time, I'll be better still.

#

For the amusement value, I reproduce hereunder some opening passages from my earlier efforts to tell a story.

( From about 2000 )

2000: it feels so long ago. I hadn't the slight clue, but I thought I was the shit.

I did finish this. 12,000 words of demons, and people running around in confusion which was a reflection of authorial confusion and ignorance, and swordfights, and sieges, and Then Everyone Died, The End, because I didn't know how to finish it any other way.

I appear to have misplaced the complete 40,000 word not-a-novel I spent the year of my Junior Cert - 2002 - working on. This is probably not an entirely bad thing.

( From about 2003/4 )

This one made it to 80,000 words before I realised I had no idea what it was about, and the logic errors had become too glaring to ignore. It reads like a really bad cross between Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings, and if that sounds screwed-up and confusing, well. It was.

( From 2004/2005 )

This one is an attempt to rewrite the previous one to have it actually make sense. I spent the better part of six months, on and off, at that rather futile past-time, before the Leaving Cert came along and hit me upside the head.

( Also from about 2004/2005 )

This one... Despite what the prose might suggest, it wasn't actually too bad. It certainly never progressed far enough to become appallingly confused, thanks to the Leaving. Maybe I'll revisit it some day.

Well, I was fond of it, anyway.

( From 2005 )

2005: You don't want to know how tangled in my own plots and counterplots I ended up with this one. Unfinished and has been cannibalised for characters: I didn't know what I was doing, and worse, didn't know what I wanted to be doing. Dragons, kings, succession troubles, regencies, witchfinders - I threw everything in, and I had no idea how to make it fit together into a coherent sum-of-its-parts, much less a whole. :)

I did like the characters, though. I'll be using them, sometime.

( From about 2005/2006 )

2006: I'd figured out what a sentence is supposed to be doing. Making it work consistently was - and is - still a hit-and-miss proposition. Plotwise, though, I tried to get too complicated too quickly, and ended up tangling myself up what I thought was my own cleverness. And then, of course, I managed to get tangled up in college and bad brain chemicals before I got more than 25K words straight.

But I do have plans to go back.

( Also from 2006, but later in the year )

Apart from this passage and a couple of other paragraph-y bits, this one doesn't exist yet. But I am determined that it will. It has gods and dragons and megalomania and rebellion and sorcery and siblings who become enemies and then need to reconcile for the greater good. I'm currently trying not to be seduced by its promises, in order to actually finish what I'm working on now. :)

( And this is what I'm working with now: )

Not brilliant, by any means, but better than I was even two years ago. And I was still in love with it this morning.

Yeah, I have to laugh at myself, sometimes. :)