Friday, I finished a new story—my sixth of the year, so yay, me!—and sent it off to market.

Yesterday, I reread the full manuscript of a novel of mine—one that three major publishers sat on for a combined nine years—in order to decide whether it was worth revisiting.

And today, having come to the conclusion that, yes, there is enough good and true and real in for me not to abandon it, I’ll begin the work of bringing it up to my 2014 standards. (Or trying to anyway.)

What do I mean by that?

I’ll let Kenneth Koch explain.

While in the basement looking for an electronic file of the piece so I won’t have to re-key in every word before beginning revisions, I came across my copy of one of my favorite poems, a poem which, among other things, will show why I’ve vacillated for so long about whether or not I should try marketing this work again.

It’s Koch’s “The Art of Poetry,” which to me rings true about all writing, not just poetry, and you can read the whole thing over at the Poetry Foundation site. I urge you to do just that, but the relevant section explaining my hesitation is this:

Just how good a poem should be
Before one releases it, either from one’s own work or then into the purview of others,
May be decided by applying the following rules: ask 1) Is it astonishing?
Am I pleased each time I read it? Does it say something I was unaware of
Before I sat down to write it? and 2) Do I stand up from it a better man
Or a wiser, or both? or can the two not be separated? 3) Is it really by me
Or have I stolen it from somewhere else? (This sometimes happens,
Though it is comparatively rare.) 4) Does it reveal something about me
I never want anyone to know? 5) Is it sufficiently “modern”?
(More about this a little later) 6) Is it in my own “voice”?
Along with, of course, the more obvious questions, such as
7) Is there any unwanted awkwardness, cheap effects, asking illegitimately for attention,
Show-offiness, cuteness, pseudo-profundity, old hat checks,
Unassimilated dream fragments, or other “literary,” “kiss-me-I’m-poetical” junk?
Is my poem free of this? 8) Does it move smoothly and swiftly
From excitement to dream and then come flooding reason
With purity and soundness and joy? 9) Is this the kind of poem
I would envy in another if he could write? 10)
Would I be happy to go to Heaven with this pinned on to my
Angelic jacket as an entrance show? Oh, would I? And if you can answer to all these Yes
Except for the 4th one, to which the answer should be No,
Then you can release it, at least for the time being.
I would look at it again, though, perhaps in two hours, then after one or two weeks,
And then a month later, at which time you can probably be sure.

Those are the sorts of questions I ask myself before sending a story to an editor. Which can be a problem as works begin to age.

Each story I write makes me a better writer. Each story I write, whether it succeeds or fails, brings me closer to having the tools I’ll need to write the stories I was meant to write, that only I can write, stories which might still be forthcoming. So when I look at an older piece, written by a younger me, one not in possession of the skills I have now, well …

If it’s been published, I can still enjoy it, and be pleased that it made its way out into the world. But if I’m looking at an unpublished manuscript, I often find myself thinking …

I could have done that better. Both on a micro level of word choices and a macro level of choosing settings and characters to best bring the theme alive and make my point. And when I do think, no, that’s not as good as what I could create now, into the drawer it goes. Because the story is no longer something about which I feel, as Koch recommends, that I’d “be happy to go to Heaven with this pinned on to my Angelic jacket as an entrance show.”

Once I’ve moved beyond a work in the way, it’s always felt wrong for me to continue bringing it to market. I’ve been lucky in that every short story I’ve written for the past 20 years (if not longer) has eventually found a market. So any remaining unsold short stories are so ancient as to be considered juvenilia I’d never revisit.

This novel, on the other hand, which once spent four years with one editor at a certain publisher (and no, I won’t name either of them) …

Even though the me of now would not have made the same choices as the me of then, now that I’ve spent all of yesterday rereading it, I learned that the story still moved me. It still has power. It should be allowed a chance at life, in the event a reader somewhere out there might agree.

So today the me of 2014 will begin collaborating with yester-me to see whether or not we’re capable of working together.

Perhaps revisions to the manuscript won’t allow to me answer all of Koch’s poetic questions in the affirmative. But I’m hopeful by the time I’m done, I’ll be able to answer “yes” to enough of them that I’ll be faced with an even more difficult challenge.

Finding a publisher.