Does someone else write your stories?

[Keith Inc.]

A comment i've heard a few times. Writers go back and read an older story and it feels funny.

Not just details that we were ignorant of earlier, or grammar we thought was fine at the time but became a peeve later.

I sometimes read something that's more than a year old, and it's like a complete stranger wrote it. I can't remember how i could have made some choices, or come up with some of the turns of phrase that i think work particularly well.

Some of it, of course, i remember or recognize. But every so often i don't. It's almost a presque vu feeling.

I wonder if that or something like it could be how the concept of muses came about? Some art is created, feeling almost like an out of body experience, especially when reviewed later. When it almost seems like another personality was working through us at that time.

Does anyone know what i'm trying to talk about?

[Melrick]

Yep, I know what you mean. I periodically go back and read my older stories, and they invariably feel like I'm reading someone elses story. If it's what I consider to be particularly good then I try to remember just how I managed to write it, but I usually fail.

[CloverReef]

I totally get that too. Just recently I was going through an old notebook of crap I wrote a couple years ago. Shuffling through the pages upon pages of fics I remembered and felt nostalgic about, and then I'd come across like 1-2 pages of something I didn't even remember writing. Wasn't all that bad or horrid in the grammar department, but still it was a fun find.

[Jaded_Star]

Same here. I like going back and reading things I've written in the past, it reminds me of what was going on in my life at that time. I have one story I wrote with my best friend in high school, that one is my personal favorite to reread. There are parts I clearly remember writing with her and talking about, and others portions are a complete blank, I can't even remember if I wrote it or she did.

I also have a tenancy to write while intoxicated... those are always interesting to read and edit sober....

[Danyealle]

I understand completely! I have stuff that I pull up, entire stories, that I don't/can't remember writing. I just look at them all -like and go wtf? Where did that come from and when did I do it?

Then again, I look at my current work and wonder if it's actually me that did such a thing. The being that failed high school English classes repeatedly couldn't possibly write the stuff I do. Maybe it's aliens? Or I'm possessed? Who knows!