Going through old clips

I could never read anything of mine after it went into print. I was always worried I'd find a mistake.

 

I think I was a better writer 25 years ago, when I had to produce 60-80 inches of copy a day, 240 publication days a year.

A lot of it was padded crap, overbloated filler, but having to bang out a dozen gamers every game night (usually 3-4 full gamers and 6-8 follows) is truly baptism under fire.

Actually I went back and looked at stuff I wrote for high school and college classes, and believe it or not, most of it is decent. Shit, there was even a book report I wrote in sixth grade I wouldn't be ashamed to hand in as a story for publication. (And which certainly whips the shit out of most of the writers currently on our staff.)

I guess I could always write, even back in grade school. The problem was I didn't learn how to TYPE until I was like 20 years old.


I have to laugh, looking back at this old stuff: I remember teachers from grade school saying "you are going to have to write and rewrite, do draft after draft after draft of everything you write. You'll do dozens of drafts sometimes."

I doubt I have ever done four drafts of anything I have ever written in my life. I suppose once we entered into the age of computers where you can move graphs and cut and paste with three keystrokes I do modify stuff time and time again which counts as a new "draft," but as far as going back and rewriting the whole thing from the start?

Hardly ever.


But I certainly wrote some columns that seem kinda dumb now in retrospect.

 

I stayed motivated by assuming everything I do isn't very good.

 

I'm my own harshest critic when it comes to my writing, but I can look back at maybe two columns I wrote back in college that I would point to now and say were among my best writing.

With that said, I stopped obsessing about clips when I became a banker.

 

I usually look back at old stuff and start remembering what was going on when I was reporting and writing some particular piece of work. If I see now how I would do it better, well, that's a good sign - means I have made progress.

 

Eighteen years since I regularly wrote for a newspaper, I still have stories -- and one in particular -- that I wish I could rewrite. My writing was always OK, but my reporter's eye sucked. As a freelance magazine writer these days, I'm a much better reporter, which makes my stories much better.

As for old clips, I think I threw most of them out in the last cleaning spasm.