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[julilly]

It's funny that you asked that today, Mare, because I was going to ask if anyone had ever found themselves actually enjoying reading one of their own stories, not for writing/proofreading's sake, but just as a reader?

I actually just recently went back and read a few of my stories. The whole time I was thinking "I wrote this? Really?" It just didn't feel like it was something that had come from my mind.

I did enjoy them though, it was refreshing to go back and relive those story lines.

[FrickingKaos]

Not gonna lie. I read my own stuff all the time, especially when I get a new reader for something I wrote a long time ago, just to refresh my memory. Besides FYO one of my favorite stories is Jizzle Of Oz, the line about Howie's hair products always makes me giggle.

[RokofAges75]

^ Like you and Mare said, I do that too, go back and read parts of my stories when someone reviews after awhile to refresh my memory or just for fun.  But I rarely read one "cover to cover," mostly because most of them make me cringe and also because I just don't have the attention span.  I wouldn't have the attention span to get through all of CC without my Kindle.  It was just an interesting experience to realize I was actually enjoying reading it.  I try to write the kind of stories I would enjoy reading, but I feel like it's hard to get that same kind of pleasure out of reading your own stuff compared to someone else's.  And, to be honest, if someone was like, "Oh, I only read my own stuff!" I would probably think they were a huge ego-maniac! LOL

[RokofAges75]

I actually just recently went back and read a few of my stories. The whole time I was thinking "I wrote this? Really?" It just didn't feel like it was something that had come from my mind.

I did enjoy them though, it was refreshing to go back and relive those story lines.

And was that a good thing or a bad thing? LOL  It is fun to go back to old stories, half of which you've forgotten.  It's like looking at old photos of yourself - a lot of them are awkward and embarrassing, but you still enjoy reliving those memories.  There are certain stories that, even if parts of them make me cringe now, I had so much fun writing that they will always have a special place in my heart.

[julilly]

And was that a good thing or a bad thing? LOL  It is fun to go back to old stories, half of which you've forgotten.  It's like looking at old photos of yourself - a lot of them are awkward and embarrassing, but you still enjoy reliving those memories.  There are certain stories that, even if parts of them make me cringe now, I had so much fun writing that they will always have a special place in my heart.

There were moments of both good and bad! Lol there was a couple "what was I thinking?" moments along with some "that was a good idea! Go me!"

[mare]

Along the lines of what we have been talking about in here, if you could pick two stories you have written as a before and after to show us how much you have grown as a writer, which two would you pick?

[FrickingKaos]

This was an easy question. I am so sorry for bringing up this story again though, I'm sure you're all tired of me talking about it lol. For the before I'd say Incomplete, my first story I wrote at AC. It's just completely different from how I write now. For the after, I am pretty sure you guys can guess which one I will say. Figured You Out. For me FYO is my best work, and I am just proud of myself for taking that chance and writing something darker than what I would normally.

[RokofAges75]

This reminds me of the review you left me earlier for CC.

I'm gonna cheat a little and pick three that go together, my three cancer stories.

1. "Don't Wanna Lose You Now" http://www.dreamers-sanctuary.com/vault/dontwanna.html
This was one of my earliest fanfics; I wrote it around April of 2000, when I had just turned 15.  It's a Brian story, because Brian was my victim of choice back then, although Nick is the one who dies in it, from complications of surgery after giving Brian his bone marrow to save his life LOL.  It's really cheesy and amateur.  The writing is very simple and more tell-y than show-y; there are some chapters that are only a few paragraphs long with no dialogue because it's all summary and other chapters that are mostly dialogue with not a lot of description in between.  I'm pretty sure the only research I did for this story involved looking up things in my Lurlene McDaniel books, because that's what it was clearly inspired by.

2. "Broken" http://absolutechaos.net/viewstory.php?sid=5354
Three years later, I gave this type of plot another shot, after obsessively plowing through the Swollen Issues series.  When I started Broken, I was a 17-year-old high school senior, and I was taking AP English, where all we did was analyze the symbolism in classic literature, and you can totally see the influence of that in my awkward attempts to include symbolic imagery in the first half of this story.  On the other hand, I had gotten better at showing, not telling and now tried to show EVERYTHING, so that it took 17 chapters for Nick to even get a diagnosis and ended up being 150 chapters long!  I also went through a phase with song lyrics... I had a whole playlist/soundtrack of songs that inspired me, and I pasted their lyrics into the beginning and ends of chapters, sometimes in the middle, which I realize now is really cheesy and distracting and annoying!  But I did learn how to research with this story; it's a lot more detailed and medically accurate than the last one, although there are still some mistakes.  What's interesting is that I think the quality of writing gets drastically better even from the beginning to the end of Broken.  What happened is that I started college right in the middle of writing it, and I think making that huge transition and "growing up" in real life helped me grow up as a writer too, because everything I've written since Broken has been so much better than anything I wrote before it.

3. "Curtain Call" http://absolutechaos.net/viewstory.php?sid=10159
I started this one about seven years after Broken and just finished it last year.  I wasn't sure what the reaction would be when I started writing another cancer story, and I worried people would see it as a pathetic attempt to recapture the "magic" of Broken, which was my first story that got pretty popular.  So I set out to learn from my mistakes in Broken and make this one as different as possible, simplifying the storyline, telling it from first person, writing a female lead who was very different from Broken's Claire, toning down the melodrama, and getting rid of the song lyrics and soundtrack and all the stuff that made Broken cheesy.  Broken taught me a lot about how to research for this kind of story, and I now had access to resources that weren't even on my radar when I started Broken - everything from Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube to medical journals and personal blogs.  The result is that CC is super detailed and, as far as I can tell, mostly correct.  The premise may not be as believable, but in terms of writing, it's a lot better.

Sorry, that was a super long answer!

[Sakabelle]

I very rarely go back and read my old stuff from back to front, though sometimes (as some of you have also said) I'll go back and read a chapter of something if someone leaves a review and I've forgotten what's happened in it.

As for things that display how I've grown as a writer? I have this horrible teenybopper website from when I was fifteen that not only includes a bunch of self insert Nick fics, but also includes "banter" between my friend and I before every story lol

But as for stories on AC, I guess probably In Pieces.  I'm still sort of proud of it, but now when I look back, it was really far fetched and the worst part about that is when I was writing it I was trying really hard to make it not so.

This is sort of weird for me to say, but I think in contrast to that, my challenge story Nick's Dirty Kicks would be the one to read to see how far my writing has come. It's got a completely ridiculous plotline, but I do think that the level of actual writing in it is pretty good and I'm really proud of the way it came out. I don't think I would have been able to do a story like that justice back when I was writing In Pieces. This story has the element of humour I probably would have put in back then, I just don't think I would have conveyed them as well.

[RokofAges75]

Is your teenybopper website still online, Steph?   LOL  I think any of us who started writing as teenies have sites/stories like that!

I loved your Nick's Dirty Kicks story so much, and what made it so funny was the fact that you took such a ridiculous premise and wrote it so "seriously" - and so well!  Sometimes I think our best writing comes out when we write something completely out of our wheelhouse, whether it's for a silly challenge like that or just a different genre, like Tracy did with FYO.  I know for me, when thinking of scenes I'm most proud of writing, like Mare asked about yesterday, I don't think first of the dramatic scenes from my medical drama type stories, because I'm so used to writing those, they don't stand out to me.  The scenes I'm most of are scenes I really had to stretch myself to write, like the action sequences in 00Carter or the first zombie attack in Undead, stuff I'd never written before and probably wouldn't have been able to write well ten years ago.

[mare]

It was your author's note at the end of your CC chapter that gave me the idea for this question lol

This is where typing on my iPod isn't going to work on this question so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to answer it do I can be ramble and long.

[RokofAges75]

I kinda thought so!   Ramble away! LOL

[Sakabelle]

Thanks for the compliment on Nick's Dirty Kicks, Julie I really enjoyed writing it. I think you're right when you say that some of our best writing comes from trying something totally out of the box. I know that's definitely what happens for me. Now that I've gone back to writing romance I find myself growing really frustated with it actually, because I feel as though since I've written so much of it that it should be awesome, and I almost put myself on a pedestal when it comes to writing in that genre and nothing that comes out sounds good enough to me. Also, there are only so many ways to write a dramatic kissing scene, lol.

Is your teenybopper website still online, Steph?   LOL  I think any of us who started writing as teenies have sites/stories like that!

...http://www.angelfire.com/mb/aslongasyouloveme/

In a word, yes. LOL. I hope it provides you with some entertainment.

[RokofAges75]

Thanks for the compliment on Nick's Dirty Kicks, Julie I really enjoyed writing it. I think you're right when you say that some of our best writing comes from trying something totally out of the box. I know that's definitely what happens for me. Now that I've gone back to writing romance I find myself growing really frustated with it actually, because I feel as though since I've written so much of it that it should be awesome, and I almost put myself on a pedestal when it comes to writing in that genre and nothing that comes out sounds good enough to me. Also, there are only so many ways to write a dramatic kissing scene, lol.

...http://www.angelfire.com/mb/aslongasyouloveme/

In a word, yes. LOL. I hope it provides you with some entertainment.

LOL I know what you mean with the romance thing - I get the same way with drama, specifically medical drama.  I always come back to it because it's my favorite genre, but sometimes I do get tired of trying to find creative ways to write the same types of scenes.

And thanks for the link! LOL  I get a kick out of looking at these old sites, with the hotmail email addys, the Bravenet guestbook, and the little animated dolls!  So 2001... oh, the nostalgia!!  I remember when my website used only Comic Sans and had a different tiled background and midi on each page - so tacky!!

[Sakabelle]

LOL I know right? Everyone had those silly little dolls back in the day. I remember I had quite a collection of midi files on multiple floppy disks..haha! 2001 was good times.