The other night I was thinking about a failed novel I wrote several years earlier. The thought was perhaps I could go back re-read the manuscript and approach the idea fresh and see if I could write a new version absent the flaws that had been exposed at its beta read.

The first shocker was the dates on the files. Nine Years? Really? Where had the time gotten?

Okay it’s been awhile, onto reading the first scene of that novel. (It was late and bed was fast approaching. Anyway a part of my brain did recognize that this behavior was mostly avoidance because a shiny new project is always more alluring than the pick and spade work of any current Work In progress.)

Okay, that opening scene is far beyond my currently level of craft.

It wasn’t terrible, so there is that, but it was fatally flawed in its prose execution.

There’s danger when you look at a historical piece of your own art that the lack of competence will damage your confidence in your present works. After all at the time I wrote the novel and invited others to beta read it I thought I had performed decently and I think I am doing so my current projects. Am I as deluded now as I was then?

In some ways absolutely.

Artists are often the worse judges of their own material, simultaneously blind to some faults and hyper aware of others. This is why feedback is vital. Good, honest, and constructive feedback is the super serum that lifts our mediocre efforts into competent works.

However there is a flip side to the self-blindness and that is it can make it difficult to see the progress we have actually achieved.

The flaws in the prose in that novel from 2010 also are an indication of the progression I have reached. In that time I have, in gamer lingo, leveled up several times since writing that manuscript. The characters, the concepts, and the setting of the novel are all still quite compelling to me and if I choose to attempt it again the prose will be substantially better.

I am not depressed by the awfulness of that earlier work I am energized by how easily I can see it and the numerous ideas for how to do it better.