Egads, What I Did Years Ago and Abandoned is Good! (A Dilemma)

I had a great time on my recent Colorado trip - deep thanks to Lighthouse and the Colorado School of Mines for hosting me.

I had a deep experience at Mines - my alma mater. My host took me over to our base for the day, the Honors House and, lo and behold, it was where I’d lived during my junior year, which was a difficult year for many reasons, and was the year, also, when my artistic aspirations really started speaking to me.

At the end of a long, beautiful day of talking to students and touring the campus and giving my talk, I got a chance to spend a few moments in the exact location of my old desk, where so much of that foment took place, looking out at a view I hadn’t seen in forty years (Illinois Avenue, streetlights in the maple trees). Forty years had passed but I could remember keenly how bad I’d wanted to, someday, be a publisher writer. And there I was, this old guy, in that exact spot (moved, grateful). It was such a direct experience of Time, Having Passed.

I’ll never forget it.

Now, for our question of the week:

Q.

My writing is tidal: I’m freelance, I get a job, become disillusioned, dream of a different life, write some stories, become skint1, get another job, repeat.

I have folders of unfinished stories. Which I sometimes reread, hoping for a headstart, then flinch at how shonky2 they are.

But worse are the times… I go back and read one I have no recollection of writing. I see there are multiple drafts, varying titles, I see it’s been worked on. I see that the date is over 10 years old. The notes added to it, are by me.

But the terrible thing is: it’s good - better than anything I’ve been writing recently. And my fear is that- is this even mine anymore? If I start editing this, will I ruin it? Can I honestly, hand on heart say I wrote this?

My friend Bill, a painter, had a nightmare before his private view, that someone had broken into the gallery and painted on top of his paintings. But the horror of his dream, was that the paintings were better.

Is this a filing question? How do you divide and conquer, how do you choose how to go ...