The Old Never Gets Old

 

My 2014 poetry book

 

“Wow! That book was published in 2014!” This was a thought I had recently when I was looking for the publication date of one of my poetry books that I was promoting. And even though this book was published over 10 years ago, I was still going to promote it. Why? The book’s theme was still relevant. I mean, we do still care about our soldiers and veterans, right? As well as those who lost their lives while serving their country.

 

Relevance is something writers need to aim for when they are trying to get their work published. One thing I was often told about my Tips book was that the topic was evergreen. And while this is true, I have realized that, as I have been working on revising it for the third time, a lot of the material was not. In fact, it contained a lot of dated material, something that can happen to any nonfiction book. (I often keep hoping that this third revision of the book will be the last one, but who knows!)

 

But circling back to a book’s old publication date, the question remains: Should a writer retire their work after a number of years have passed since publication? I think it really depends on the type of work that is at issue here.

 

When it comes to a book, a lot of factors will decide if the writer should quietly stop putting their energy into promoting it. Some of those factors include whether or not the topic is relevant, if there is a demand for that kind of information or books with that theme, and if there is anything new related to that topic which the old edition has not yet covered. With the Tips book, for example, it never discussed AI. However, AI is a hot topic in the writing community, so it belongs in a book about writing (and I am including it in this particular book about writing).

 

As far as articles, essays, poems, and short stories are concerned, the quality of the work is what must stand out in order for it to withstand the test of time. People will always want to read a good story, poems which are well-written, and essays including lived experiences. This is why we still read the works of Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe even today. With nonfiction, old work is a reflection of the time it was published. For example, anyone who reads the writings of Benjamin Franklin will understand that his thoughts and opinions were all products of the time period they stemmed from. There is the knowledge that dated writing is, well, dated. Still, they serve a purpose; historians are interested in them because they are interested in reading material about certain time periods, and students will read them in order to complete assignments. So, in this way, the old may be old, but it is still relevant.

 

If a nonfiction book warrants an update, then it should be updated. Update the book before continuing to promote it.

 

But with poetry, fiction, essay collections, and plays? Never stop promoting them. Why? Because the old never gets old.

 

That 2014 book I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post is a poetry book. The theme is still relevant, and so is the content of the poems, so that book can still be promoted – yes, even 12 years after it has been published.

 

The same goes with any of my works of fiction, essays, and story collections. Promote, promote, promote.

 

Authors should never choose to stop promoting their work only because said work was published a X number of years ago. If the author knows the work is too dated or irrelevant, then of course they shouldn’t promote the work. But if the theme or the topic is still relevant, then by all means, keep promoting it.

 

Which is why I will always promote my poetry book about the seasons, because we’ll always have seasons. I will always promote my collection of YA horror stories because I know there are young adults out there who enjoy reading horror stories. And I will always promote my book about writing parents because there are always going to be writing parents.  

 

I’ll continue to submit YA horror stories for publication because there is still a demand for YA horror stories. I will continue to submit writing about the seasons, should I ever feel compelled to do so, because the topic is still relevant.

 

The point is that the writer should not decide to give up on wanting to get their work published or promoting their work just because the work is old or they tried a certain number of times to get it published but ended up in Rejection City. If your writing is still relevant or something that a certain demographic of readers will want to read, then keep going. Keep promoting it. Keep trying to get it published. 

 

I wrote a story in 2012 that was published in an anthology in 2025. I wrote a novella in 2011 that was published in 2025. (Alas, it is currently out of print, but I am hoping it will be back in print soon!)  

 

The writing may be old, but the demand for that kind of material isn’t. Update it if necessary, but don’t ever stop trying to get your work into print. You WILL find a home for it somewhere, so keep submitting it! 

 

Sometimes, You Just Have to Start Over

 

Photo Credit: Marta Nogueira at Pexels

 

Writers tend to invest a lot of time and hard work into their projects. They’ll spend hours and days working on that article, short story, or book, even if it seems to be going nowhere.

 

Writers tend to be stubborn, so when it comes to something they are writing that appears to be impossible or useless to write, they’ll roll up their sleeves and give it their best effort. They actually LIKE the idea of something appearing to be impossible to write, because then they can say that THEY wrote it. THEY got the job done.

 

So it’s understandable that, when upon realizing that it’s time to abandon a project, the writer will have a hard time doing so. They just DON’T want to give up on it. Not yet, anyway.

 

That was my situation this week. And for me, abandoning the writing project I was spending ALL of that time working on was an easy thing to do – because I have deadlines to meet!

 

I have been spending time this month working on two different articles for two publications. One of them is for my column writing gig. With both articles, I really had a hard time getting them written.

 

With one article, I couldn’t find sufficient information to make the article work.

 

For the other article, I couldn’t figure out the slant. I knew WHAT I wanted to write about, but I had to figure out HOW to write about it.

 

So I spent a lot of time this month trying to make those articles work. I kept up with my research and looked into other articles on this topic.

 

But all of that just wasn’t really going anywhere, and as my deadlines got closer, I knew I had to make a choice: Either keep up with it or ditch them and try something else.

 

In the end, I decided to ditch both articles. I didn’t delete them, because maybe I would have better luck with them later, but I decided that it was time to change things up a bit in order for me to turn my articles in on time.

 

My solution: Change the topic. I did this for both articles and immediately got to work on them (again!) with the focus on these new topics. Fortunately, these efforts have been more successful.

 

As to those articles I ditched, I figured that maybe the one that I could not get enough information for just needed to sit for a while. Maybe I will come across that information at a later time. There are always new publications popping up! With the other one, I decided on a slant for it, BUT that particular slant will require some time and money. I can just work on this article at leisure and send it to a different publication that I do not have deadlines with whenever it is ready.

 

This was not the first time I have had to abandon a writing project and start over again. I have had to do this with poems, short stories, essays, and even whole books. In fact, my novels Shadow of Samhain and Faded Reflection were rewritten several times before I felt they were “just right” and sent them out. With a short story that reached a dead end, I decided that since the deadline for my submission was fast approaching, I needed to put that one on hold and write a different story entirely for that particular anthology.

 

If a writer is struggling with a WIP, one of the solutions to getting out of that struggle is to just put it away for a while. Another solution is to abandon it entirely and start over.

 

Starting from the beginning really isn’t so bad. It may seem frustrating to have to start over, especially after investing so much time and effort into trying to write or revise something, but if the current method to get the job done isn’t working, starting over is usually the best thing to do.

 

Sometimes, abandoning a project and starting over again is just the thing needed in order to be successful with that attempt to write the thing the writer was unable to write before. A fresh start can offer a fresh perspective and new ideas, so consider giving it a try the next time you are struggling to write or revise your work-in-progress.

Reading Books Can Help You Write Books – and Fix Story Problems

 

Photo credit: Unknown creator on Pixabay

 

When I was a kid, I wanted to be one thing when I grew up: An astronaut. And I planned to get there by first going into the Air Force. With this plan in place, I threw myself into learning everything I could about space and jets. My parents probably thought it was cute that I was reading books about jets. But then I became deaf at age 13 and there went my plans to join the Air Force and become an astronaut. Bummer.

 

But I never lost my love for either of those things. But nowadays, my fascination has more to do with space and not jets.

 

I couldn’t travel into space in real life, but as a writer, I could write about these subjects. Not only this, I could write stories of characters traveling through space. I’ve written a children’s book with just such a character, and I plan to submit it in the near future.

 

Meanwhile, I’m writing short stories and poems about outer space, objects in space, and space travel. I even have a poem about something related to a phenomenon discovered in space in my poetry book, Watch This Space (and, no, the “Space” in the book’s title is not a reference to outer space, though when I think about it now, I find it ironic that I wrote a poem about something occurring in space that was discovered JUST from observing space!).

 

One short story I have written, however, left me doubtful about it for a while there. I knew it needed work, but I couldn’t figure out what kind of work it needed, exactly.

 

I got the idea to write this story after reading the science fiction novel Obsidian by Bryan W. Alaspa. A character in that story, an astronaut, thinks about a myth he read that might have something to do with an episode his crew member was going through. I was so fascinated by this myth, that I asked myself one of the most common questions that writers ask to get ideas: “What if?”

 

I decided to explore the possibility of this myth being true in a story! It’s a science fiction story, but I wasn’t happy with the first draft. It just fell short. I wrote it as a parody story in response to a submission call. But when I reread their guidelines and saw the prerequisite “NO ALIENS!” I rewrote the story as a regular sci-fi story and figured it was at least passable. Still, I wasn’t happy with it, so I just put it away for a while, figuring I would go back to it later.

 

I have tinkered with that story ever since as ideas came to me, but nothing really came out of it.

 

Then I was added to an anthology that had a theme which I could fit into this story.

 

And, thankfully, the guidelines didn’t state that they didn’t want stories with aliens. That meant I could submit this story!

 

But I needed to fix it first.

 

The first thing I did was revise the story so that it fit with the anthology’s theme.

 

But even after doing this, I STILL needed to figure out a better ending for the story! The original ending was just too “meh.” And it didn’t really offer any ideas on what happened to my characters.

 

I let the story sit again, deciding to relegate this problem to that “workshop” in my mind.

 

Then I started reading the novel The Martian by Andy Weir. I was sorting through ebooks available to read on my Libby app one day and, remembering how much we loved the movie, I decided to start reading the novel.

 

And reading that novel has helped me figure out how to fix the ending of my story!

 

Like Mark in The Martian, my character is stranded on a planet. He has no way to get back to the shuttle hovering in orbit, and radio communication was destroyed by the hostile aliens he and his crew member were ambushed by. Also like Mark, my character is an engineer. So reading about Mark’s train of thought and actions to figure out how to stay alive on Mars until he is rescued gave me an idea: My character, who is also an engineer, needs to be doing the same thing! Not surrendering to the aliens holding him captive, but figuring out a way to escape and notifying his crew member on the shuttle that he needs to be rescued!

 

With this knowledge, I was able to once again approach revisions of my short story with a fresh perspective. The revisions are going well so far. I’m still reading The Martian, and it continues to inform and inspire me about the thought processes my character should have as an astronaut who is also an engineer. The novel is amazing, and I am glad it has helped me to figure out just what kind of ending my short story needs.