Buried treasure

I read a story I wrote before my first published book

Over the weekend, I read through the latest draft of a story I wrote before INCARNATE.

If you’re like, Hey, that’s not possible, you popped into existence with INCARNATE, so you couldn’t have written anything before it, well, okay if that’s your perception, but the fact is, INCARNATE was the 17th manuscript I wrote. The first one anyone thought should be published.

I wrote INCARNATE in late 2009. Spinning Story — the one I just read through this weekend — was the story I wrote immediately before. Number 16.

When people find out how many things I wrote before INCARNATE, they almost always ask if I plan to publish any of them. I say no, with the exception of maybe one. Spinning Story is that one. For a few reasons.

1. Business. It’s a story that fits with the career I’ve built and will make my readers happy. Before that, I was writing lots of different kinds of stories, scratching different genre itches, experimenting and trying to figure out what sort of story I want to tell for a whole career. This one fits.

   1. Perhaps not strangely, some of my very earliest stories also fit here. But I’m not sure there’s enough there to go back to.

2. It’s a story I want to go back to. Most of the others — I don’t. They did what they needed to do, which was to teach me how to write, how to build a story. They were practice. They’re done. But this one could still be something.

3. I know (basically) what to do with it now. It involves a full rewrite — from the ground up, with different worldbuilding, backstory, and even plot. But I know how to make it into a story that other people will want to read.

It was an interesting feeling, reading something I last worked on in 2009, before I was published — before I even knew if I would ever be published. There were points when I was working on Spinning Story that I truly thought it wouldn’t happen. That’s one of the reasons I wrote INCARNATE — because it was a story I’d put aside three years before when it seemed too challenging. But by 2009, I’d practically given up. I felt like I didn’t have anything to lose, so I wrote something I thought no one would ever see. (Obviously I hadn’t given up that much, though, since I sent query letters for it.)

But back to Spinning Story.

Man, rereading a manuscript so many years later — over a decade — is really something. I’m a different writer now, but the story itself is very me. There’s a gentle romance. Sweet characters. Nice humor. A voice I’d really love to go back and capture. The book is creative. Fun. Emotional. It has lots of good stuff I’d be happy with even now.

And some stuff I’d want to fix. The plot is . . . fine. The worldbuilding is more complex than it needs to be. And so is the backstory, which tries too hard to connect this story to a different story set in the world. (I’d actually forgotten about this connection, so when the narrative started touching on it, I was able to read it as someone totally new would. It doesn’t quite work like 2009-Me hoped.) I also noted to myself that there were sections I was really skimming over . . . some because I knew those bits were getting scrapped anyway, but mostly because I wanted to get back to the good stuff.

Even so, it was fun to read it. I loved writing that story so much. Which is why I want to go back to it.

But as I said, it’s going to change. A lot.

In, hmm, maybe 2014? I had an idea for how to salvage this story. The heart of it, anyway. It’ll have a different world, a new backstory for everyone, a stronger plot. But the stuff I love? The whole reason I wrote the story to begin with? That’s got to come with.

That’s why I read it again: to see what was worth carving out.

But I got another thing out of it, too: 2009-Me may have been on the verge of giving up, but she left 2022-Me 75,000 words of buried treasure, and a good reminder to keep going.