I was chatting with a group of authors today when someone asked whether I’d ever go back and edit books I’ve already published.
As an indie author I can always pull my books back from distributors and rework them, but just because I can doesn’t mean I should.
When I look back at my first novel, there are plenty of things I could fix. The book works on a macro level, but scene by scene there are definitely weaknesses. At the time, there were parts that didn’t sit well with me, but I didn’t know why. Still, I knew it was the best I could do at that point in my career and so for that reason alone, I’m proud of it. I refuse to go back and fix the scenes that don’t work.
As we grow as artists, there’ll always be something in a past writing project that we can do better now. We’ll want to fix it. The trick, in my opinion, is not to keep tinkering with the past but to make sure our current work-in-progress is the best we can make it at this stage in our careers.
