Do you have earlier writing sitting on a thumb drive or in a drawer? For a fun and enlightening exercise, try retro revision.

Writing Tip for Today: What can you learn from self-editing earlier writing work?

Cringe Factor

When I pull out old manuscripts, I cringe. I’m not the same writer today as I was when I drafted the work. Yet there was a reason I wrote what I did. I like to ask myself what drew me to that story or topic and how my interests have changed. Rereading old work is a great exercise in-between deadlines or projects.

The ten thousand hours of practice a writer needs to become skillful should be evident whenever you review past efforts. You should see the errors, yes, but also your progress. How has your style, voice or method changed?

While it can be cringey to revisit your early work, take a look at how you constructed sentences, descriptions, dialogue or the narrative. Were you relying on many modifiers or writing static scenes or monologues? All these cringe-worthy examples can inform how you write today and tomorrow.

What Jumps Out

As you revise your older stuff, keep a critical eye toward what jumps out. These places can be positive or not-so-much. Try reading aloud before you start editing. Do you rearrange or add/subtract words as you read? Where do you stumble?

Many times, I buried my ledes in the body of my work or didn’t quite gain forward movement in a scene. As I reread aloud, I sense that “jumps out” feeling and understand what I didn’t when I drafted the passage. By bringing a particular example to the opening instead of starting with a generality, you can better grab readers’ attention.

By the same token, I have a talent for stating the same thought several ways. When I do retro revision, I can better judge which example is the strongest and strike the others. The same is true for similes and metaphors. If I’ve piled on, I can leave the strongest one, and increase the weight and reader reaction.

Turn your cringeworthy early work into a self-editing workout.

Retro Revision

As you identify your stumbles in earlier work, you can revise them. You may still not have a publishable product—either the topic isn’t timely or the novel idea had too many structural flaws—but even if you only mentally revise, you give your editing chops a good workout.

When you return to your current work-in-progress, you can use that retro writing to remind you of good craft practices. I think writers need an ego boost at times, and revisiting your earlier work can show you how much better you write now.

And who knows? Book trends tend to run in cycles—one year writing about sexual abuse is a hot topic, the next no one wants to read about it. That nonfiction, memoir or novel you started way back when may come back into favor. If you’ve retro revised that work, you might see an opportunity open up for the topic. Don’t spend hours trying to make early work prize-worthy, but a brief look at how far you’ve come might put a smile on your face.

What’s your reaction to your early writing?