Do you save your old work?

I recall being sent to the principal for a special award when I was about six...I think it was a descriptive piece about fog. I really want to read it but I'm pretty sure my mother threw all my old school books out (nooooooo!!!!). I think keeping our old stories is an integral part of progressing as writers.

I have an old notebook from college. First year of undergrad. Had copied some writings from my earlier works from high school. Literary marvels that they were :P Sometimes I do go back to the notebook to see if I can use something from there, some lines scribbled long ago which might be written in a new way now or maybe complete some unfinished story. But I have lost my first notebook :( where I first wrote 13 poems in one day. :) My first attempt at poetry in the eighth standard. So, I guess old work gives us memories and if for nothing else, they are worth saving for these memories. Everybody is original if he is true to himself and speaks from his self. But it must be from his true self and not from the self he thinks he should be. - Brenda Ueland

The first thing I ever wrote, apart from a shopping list was my first novel, Lizards Leap. I'm currently re-editing it ... and I find that it's far easier to write something from scratch rather than trying to update something sub-standard.

First thing I ever wrote at about seven was a set of highly unoriginal storybooks called 'Bold and Bounce- Two Friends who Shouldn't Be.' They were a fox and a hare and they were best friends- whoever would have thunk it? When I took them to my mum to collect her raptures and gasps of admiration she laughed through her nose and said, 'I thought Bold and Bounce were washing powders.' Naturally I was deeply offended.

I thought I'd found God when I read The Rats by James Herbert. Immediately afterwards, I wrote my first serious piece, which was really just an Impovised take on one of the scenes from the book.

I still have, somewhere, a number of largely unfinished stories from my teens. I haven't looked through then for a while, but the last time I did they seemed reasonably well written considering my age, but nothing even remotely special, and as far as I can see their biggest failing is a lack of imagination. I also have a first draft of a novel and an aborted prequel that are both a few years old, but as Sooz said, it would take so much work to get them up to scratch I'd be better off writing something new or trying to recreate them from memory rather than sift through page after page of the dross I thought was pretty good at the time, because though the ideas are pretty good the way I've handled them is rather shoddy. I frown on stuff that's less than ten years old - my, how we change. I still think hanging onto old stuff is important, though, because it shows you how much you've grown and it can always be used as a springboard for new efforts.

Lizard's Leap - blimey, that took me back, Sooz! It's still on Amazon too, with the original cover :) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lizards-Leap-Susan-Simpson/dp/1903949262/ref=sr_... Mind you, Amazon never remove anything, even if it's no longer published. Bloody nightmare. http://www.ukauthors.com