Are your words like wine? Do they get better with age? Now that there seems to be some demand for my words, I'm going through my electronic trunk and pulling out the old bottle.
I started writing a modern western manuscript in 2007. It wasn't that it was bad, it's just that a romantic thriller I wrote was better at the time. My publisher decided to go with the newer project instead. I put the western away for a few years, although I did add a page here and there, usually after a trip to points west. I was then inspired to write a science fiction manuscript that referenced the romantic thriller.
In the last few weeks, I finally went back and checked out the western. It was like reading something written by another person.
I didn't always get my own jokes. There were references to movies and songs that I could no longer remember. I also described people who were long gone from my life. I also had to make the book
Even worse, it had been written in an old word processing program from frontier days.
So how do I bring my western up to date?
I went through the 85,000 words, line by line, making it double spaced and fixing the quote marks. Along the way, I made a few changes. I cut the bad jokes and obscure references to people, places and songs. I made the story consistent with the Rattlesnake Lawyer universe It now isn't bad.
Will I ever publish it? That depends on the publisher and the market of course. I don't want to wait forever however. Wine does become vinegar.
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