How often if at all do you go back and read your stuff?
I don't reread my own stuff very often, especially not whole novels. I am more likely to reread short stories or standout scenes from my longer ones, especially when someone reviews them or nominates them for an award or something.
Do you tend to find it a fun experience or do you tend to cringe?
Depends on the story! I find there is sort of a statute of limitations with me, where I feel proud of and pleased with a story for a certain period of time, usually a few years, until I write something that surpasses it, and then it starts to make me cringe. I reread Curtain Call on my Kindle this summer while Mare was reading it for the challenge, and I actually really enjoyed it! I hardly cringed, and that's a first for me! But then I tried to do the same with Broken and... yeesh! Lots of cringing. I haven't gotten to BMS, but even though I think it's better written than Broken, I'm sure it would make me cringe, too. And anything I wrote before those stories just makes me laugh more than cringe because it's so bad!
Do you read your own stories more than anyone else's?
Aside from proofreading, no
Do you find youself comparing your work to other people's?
Yes and no. There are certain writers whose work I admire, and I strive to raise myself to that level. And if I'm being totally honest, the opposite happens too. But at the same time, it's hard to really compare your work to someone else's because there's such a bias. You're going to be harder on yourself about some things, and yet, you may still prefer your own writing style because it's yours.
If you find mistakes in the older stuff you've written, are you prone to go back and fix it or just leave it be?
Little mistakes, like typos or missing words, yes. I have a whole bunch of them highlighted in the Kindle version of Curtain Call that I want to go correct and repost just because they bother me. I'm pretty sure I've done that with Broken and BMS at least once, though I'm also sure there are still some mistakes in there. Big things that would require major revising, I don't fix in stories that are already finished. It is what it is.
Do you tend to agree with people and their assessment of it after you've read it?
Sometimes I'm surprised that people liked certain stories as much as they did LOL. I have to remind myself that most readers don't analyze writing as much as we do in these discussion threads and aren't looking for perfection; they just want to be entertained with a good story. When I reread old favorite stories of mine that I've always put on a pedastal, I realize most of them aren't perfectly-written either. But I didn't love them for the quality of the writing; I loved them for the story. And even if I'm hard on my older stories for the quality of the writing, I do still like most of the storylines, so I guess I can see why other people liked [some of] them.
I haven't gotten a lot of concrit, but when I have, I usually agree with the person who gave it after the fact, when I go back and look at the story years later. It just sometimes takes me that much time to separate myself from something I was so attached to when I wrote it, in order to look at it more objectively.
Are you ever surprised for better or worse after reading your own stories?
I'm usually not surprised for worse because I've come to realize that I will always start cringing at stories when I go back to read them years after writing them. As long as my writing keeps improving and my stories keep getting better, the old ones will always pale in comparison, even if I loved them at the time. That doesn't surprise me.
Sometimes I'm surprised for the better when I go back to read a scene or a story and think, "Wow, I wrote that??" Usually it's for stuff that I'm not accustomed to writing - the first person narration in Curtain Call, the first horror scenes I wrote for Song for the Undead, the action sequences in 00Carter. I recently reread the first "sex scene" I ever wrote because someone nominated it for Karah's awards, and I was shocked at how dirty it was for how long ago I wrote it, but it was better than I thought it would be.
Do you find yourself repeating themes or lines you've written in other stories without realizing you've done that?
I feel like I do that all the time! I find myself opening up old stories and doing a Find search for certain phrases while I'm writing because I feel like I'm repeating myself. Sometimes I do find matches, and sometimes I don't, but I still have that feeling, like they're maybe just worded slightly differently.
I write enough medical dramas that sometimes I repeat whole scenes. I cracked up when I realized how similar the scene of AJ shaving Nick's head in CC was to the scene of AJ shaving Nick's head in Broken, right down to the same joke about "nicking him." Nice to know my sense of humor hasn't changed much in 8 years!
I've realized a theme that I write about often is hiding things or keeping secrets. Nick hid his illness in both CC and Broken (although he did it in Swollen Issues first, so that's probably where I got the idea). He is currently IN hiding in Guilty Roads. Secrets of the Heart has the word "secrets" in the title for a reason. I'm sure there are more examples, but those are the recent ones that stand out. I don't know if it's a psychological thing that I do because my writing is a secret I keep from most people in my real life, or if it just makes for an interesting story in my mind.
After reading it yourself, would you recommend it to someone else?
My recent stories, yes. My older stories, no. I draw the line at Broken. Anything before Broken is not worth reading. Anything after Broken is. Broken itself is questionable, but if you like angst and hurt/comfort and don't mind melodrama, flowery writing, and unnecessary scenes/subplots, go for it!
What's one thing you've found surprising or enlightening by reading your own work?
I just find it interesting to see how much my writing has grown over the years. I started out writing very simplistically . My writing wasn't bad in terms of conventions or story structure - I always had a good handle on that just from paying attention in school. But it was very dialogue-based and not very descriptive, more telling than showing, and my characters were not developed.
Then I moved into a more descriptive phase and went to the other extreme, with the flowery Stephenie Meyer-esque writing. That was the Broken era. The upside to this phase was that I learned how to write a well-developed character.
Now I'm to a place where I think my writing has a good balance. It's still detailed and flows nicely, but it's not so flowery and over the top. In a few more years, I may look back on the writing I'm doing now and cringe, but for now, I'm happy with how it's come along.
