Bonfire Season
November 2, 2025Few writers arrive on the literary scene fully formed like Athene from the head of Zeus. There are 'instant' successes, such as Zadie Smith whose first novel White Teeth was a bestseller, but most writers have to learn when they start out–me included.
Recently, I came across a publication that had an open call for a particular type and length of story. The only ones I had that I thought might be made to fit the bill, were some that I wrote when I first started trying to get published. They were rejected multiple times, and I had put them in a 'retired' folder with the intention of eventually rewriting them. There they languished so long that I forgot what they were about.
What I discovered was that they weren't about very much, and what there was of them was pretty awful. Had I really been that bad? and how could I ever have thought they were good enough to be published? There is no way a little rewrite could ever raise them to a level that wouldn't embarrass me.
It was a sharp lesson. I can take comfort in the fact that I have learned enough to recognise the mistakes I made. What disturbs me, is whether or not my judgement of my work is any more reliable now. Any proofreader will tell you that your own mistakes are the hardest to spot, and the same could well hold true with assessing your writing. After all, you know your characters and what your story is about, but readers have to start from scratch. I belong to a writers' group whose members can be relied on to give me honest, constructive criticism, and I have had many pieces published, which, I suppose, is the most certainty I can hope for. However, there's no guarantee that the piece I'm working on now will be any good.
Apart from giving my ego a knock, has this experience resulted in anything positive? I've realised that there's little point in hanging to these stories. I shall go through them to see if I can salvage anything at all–maybe a character's name or a descriptive phrase–then I shall add them to my pile of rough paper for writing first drafts on, and ensure they never turn up to embarrass me again.
That said, perhaps I should keep just one to remind me never to be complaisant.
Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
