Artifacts: On Revising Older Stories
Laura Rock Gaughan reflects on the challenges and complexities an author faces when preparing their first short story collection, Motherish, for publication, especially the tension between wanting to move forward creatively and revisiting old work for revision. Rock Gaughan highlights how revising older work is a negotiation between honoring the original creative moment and adapting to the author’s growth, cultural changes, and new understandings. It’s a process, she says, of balancing preservation and change, ultimately accepting that all writing is a snapshot of a particular time in a writer’s life.