random curiosity

[ratcreature]

I'm sure most people are familiar with the situation that when you look back at works of any kind (writing, art, crafts, whatever) that you finished some time ago, you come across one for which you still find the idea/concept really awesome, but now you kind of cringe at the technical execution, or at least some of it, because you've gotten better with practice since, and if you realized the same idea now, it could have been so much better. And while you still know that you were really proud of it then, and still love the concept behind it, the less accomplished realization now almost seems like a waste of a great idea.

And then some people may redo their old work if they find an idea compelling enough, i.e. rewrite that old novel in a second version, redo a painting, etc., while others may revisit similar themes or mine their old work for ideas, but don't go back to finished things to do the same thing again, just better. Personally I'm in the second "camp" and don't think I've ever done a remake version, but I wonder how others feel, thus a poll:

Poll #5503 remaking your works

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18

View Respondents

Do you ever redo old works?

View Answers

Yes.
8 (44.4%)

No.
10 (55.6%)

I'm more complicated than your radio buttons, and will explain this in a comment.
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[kiratael]

A huge amount of my old stuff was handwritten, so if I find something I like from ages ago, I usually rework while I'm typing it into the computer.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I suppose with written stuff you don't have the option to just scan or photograph the old bits you find just as they are to share them, like you can with art.

[casspeach]

I find it hard enough to dredge up the enthusiasm to write something in the first place if my outline is too detailed so I am firmly in the second camp. I'm very interested to see how the poll goes though.

[ratcreature]

For me boredom with something is more of a factor why current things aren't as good as they could be, because after a certain point I'm too fed up to fix things that I know are wrong with it, because I can't bring myself to do something again. (Laziness is of course also a factor.)

[casspeach]

I totally get that, and I'm getting worse and worse at moving beyond 'that'll do' to 'that's the best I can do' and it's kind of pissing me off to be honest. Hence my decision to take a step back from anything with a deadline this year. I want to try and make myself let things sit for a while and edit them instead of just rushing the first draft into publication.

Laziness is a big part of my problem too. I think I have whatever the opposite of a perfectionist streak is!

[ratcreature]

Well, it has some upsides, like the sociobiologists who love to justify everything with their imaginary cavemen scenarios (that strangely always reaffirm the pre-conceived notions) would probably envision: Lazy!Caveman, making half-assed flint tool: This is probably sharp enough to open up this deer carcass I've found over there. Five minutes later, some sucky but low-effort meal of opened up carcass ensues. Meanwhile, perfectionist!Caveman: I will make the perfect flint tool, and hunt the most awesome fresh deer. Many hours later, the blade is still not perfect, also the awesome deer are all much faster, and much harder to get. Three guesses who died of starvation first...

[casspeach]

LOL, so true, but I just wanna be middle-of-the-road!caveman, you know. The one that gets his deer, and doesn't kick his flint tool under the table and disavow it when his caveman mates come round!

[ratcreature]

*nods*
It's an optimization problem of whether the pay off is still worth the extra effort, or whether one is in the area where it is just a lot more effort, but the improvement of the outcome is not proportional anymore (or even better, I mean, at some points along this curve a little extra effort, causes leaps in the quality of the result), but just a tiny bit better.

[sholio]

Hee! Yes. But mostly with original stuff. I don't think it comes up for me with fanfic/art all that often because the flush of fannish love that made me want to fic/art/vid a canon tends to fade after a while, and the fanwork, with all its flaws, just becomes a bit of my history in that fandom. (Although, wow, putting all my old fic on AO3 really made me struggle with the temptation to go back and redo some of the more blatantly bad writing ... I didn't, but I can totally see how someone would.)

I think vids are the thing that's most tempting to redo, as technology gets better/faster, and especially since some of my early vids were very poorly edited and, yet, I like the song/character combos a lot. But, again, I need to still have the fannish enthusiasm to want to redo it (which means that my SGA vids are the only thing I'm really that tempted by), and there is something that's appealing to me about watching my learning curve. There's nostalgia in the flaws: "Oh, the source files are jerky because that's the vid I did on my old Emac and I kept running out of memory ..."

With my original stuff, though, I rework/rewrite/redraw it all the time. Multiple iterations for every idea. My webcomic, for example, was a novella that I wrote in high school. Then about five years later, around the time I got out of college, I rewrote it totally from the ground up. Then a few years after that, I made a graphic novel/webcomic out of it, which obviously necessitated rewriting it yet again. And even there, once I was done with it, I wanted to go back and redo it AGAIN -- I ended up redrawing some of the pages that bothered me most, and going through to do little tweaks to the art from beginning to end (like putting tattoos on a character, or changing someone's hair or skin color). I really HOPE I'm done now, but being me, I'm not totally sure about it.

I think original stuff is different partly because I never lose interest like I do in various fandoms, and partly because my standards are higher -- I feel like I'm putting myself out there to a greater extent than in fanfic/fanart, so I really want it to look good.

Heh. Long answer, sorry. :D

[ratcreature]

Interesting that it is such a difference for you between original and fan stuff. Do you think it has an impact whether you archive things in places? I mean, I know in most modern fanfic archives you can take things down to edit them again too, but in a way it's still a bit like having a published version out there rather than a draft. And I guess it is rarer that people rewrite novels that they sold to someone than the ones that got only rejected, for example. And even without this outside factor, once something already had its audience, the interest in a new version might be smaller.

Like, I don't reread most fanfic, so if an author posts a reworked version of a story I already read two years ago, even if I am still in the fandom, I'm not that likely to read it again, just because they fiddled with it.

[sholio]

Actually, I think you've got an excellent point about archiving (or just posting in general, actually). If other people have read it, I'm a lot more reluctant to change it; it does feel like having published it (which in a legal sense it has been, I guess). While it's on my hard drive, it's still in "draft" stage, even if it's technically finished.

I don't often go back and finish or rewrite unposted fic in my older fandoms either, though. It's just that something in my brain moves on when I leave the fandom. Even if I do go back to the fandom later, I'm almost invariably interested in different aspects of canon than I was into the first time -- like, my first go-around with SG1, I was strictly a Jack and Daniel girl, but when I got back into it for a while when I was fanning on SGA, it was mostly Teal'c and Vala that I was into. So there's just not enough enthusiasm to want to rework older stuff.

ETA: And, yeah, I'm with you on not re-reading a reworked version of a fic, unless I was wanting to re-read it anyway. But not just to see what's new.

[goss]

I do like the idea of going back and reworking a good idea for a better execution, but I haven't ever gone back and done it myself. Maybe the energy is just different years down the line.

As a viewer, I'm more likely to revisit a piece of visual art than a redone fic, mostly because of the nature of the media itself. I always enjoy seeing various takes or versions of one piece of art - it gives me insight into the process and the artist as well. I think re-reading multiple versions of the same fic would get tedious for me though. :/

[ratcreature]

I like looking at different versions of art too, and even if they are quite similar, having another look just takes a moment. With fic, it needs to be a more radical difference for me to become interested again, like a remake that changes things around, not just technical fixes. Not least because fiction just takes much more time investment.