A 2 AM Reading

One of the greatest delights of writing books is staying up way too late reading them at 2 AM.

No, I am indeed not kidding.

There tends to be this narrative in the writingsphere that once you finish a book, you don’t go back. If you do, you’ll hate it. And I get where its coming from. As a writer, your goal is to always evolve and improve. To become better at your craft the further you go. My point is not to disagree with that sentiment. I can’t stand stagnation. I am always researching and testing and reading and trying to improve as a writer.

But this dichotomy of either you stay the same and love your books or change and hate them feels… limited to me.

Because its not just my current books I go back and read, though they are my preferred reading material when I want to enjoy my characters. I also read bits from the book I wrote when I was 25. When I was 18. My first ever book, all the way back to lil ole 13-year-old me. Are they up to snuff on the kind of writing I want to be writing now? No. Of course not. In fact, the prologue of my first book gives me physical pain.

And I love them. I love the ideas and hope I brought into them. I love the good lines that eked their way through my young mediocrity. I’ve always written because I’ve loved my characters, gotten into their heads, felt their feelings—much like many other writers do. And even when the way they’re communicated is imperfect, I still love them. I still find joy in seeing them again.

I think what gets me about reading my own old writing is the same thing that gets me about people who are uncomfortable with sadness. Both are things that just exist. They happen and have happened. They don’t need to be given “bad” or “good” titles. You can just… be with them. Feel your feelings. Read your stories.

Now let’s circle back to an earlier point. Do I read all my writing frequently? No. What I wrote from 13-25 is pretty low on the list, unless I get a particular whim. But the first fantasy book I wrote after a decade of avoiding the genre? I read bits of that every month or two. My favorite characters from my first real attempt at publishing, who I repurposed into renaissance-era fae espionage? Every few weeks, on the dot. Especially for the character dynamics and how they interact with each other. My soon-to-be published book that’s in formatting and I probably shouldn’t read because the few typos I found will probably haunt me? Yeah, I read passages at least once a week.

My books are me. And while I don’t think they’re perfect—far from it since I have a moderate amount of notes I’d add even to the one currently being formatted, especially in context of unnecessary commas and slight overwriting—I think they matter. They have worth. I have worth.

That’s probably the part, beyond the sadness and the imposter’s syndrome, that gets me the most. It’s that, as a writer, your writing is worth something. Even when its not perfect. Nothing can be perfect. So, its better to find things of worth and things to love in between the imperfection, rather than spend your life discarding the person you used to be.

Young you deserves love. You now deserve love. In thirty years when you’ve grown far past who you are now, the person you are today *still deserves love*. And crazy, the person you will be then deserves love, too.

And so do your books, even if they aren’t great.

Loving them doesn’t mean you have to settle for sub-par literature. You can still strive for greatness. At that same time, you don’t have to abandon your old artworks like they are now the enemy. You do not have to defile and defeat them to make it to the next best project. They can exist. YOU can exist.

Love your art and move forward. Both can be true.