I still want help but I am having a hard time with understanding advice.

His observation is accurate but very narrow-focused. I think that he (and you) are missing the essential problem our waitingforzion has, at least in my view. Face it: Cogito's post is pretty facile ("master the fundamentals, practice, patience"), just like everything else everyone has ever said about any art form to anybody. It's not very helpful. Maybe waitingforzion can't be helped in this way until he grows up a bit and realizes that the Holy Grail isn't right at hand, but a huge journey away. I don't know. I've given my best advice and I'll leave it at that.

 

I don't see you saying anything much different than @Cogito, you just used different vocabulary.

You:
grows up a bit
a huge journey away

Cog:
try to cultivate the patience
Fiction does take liberties with those guidelines, but you shouldn't take liberties until you have mastered the fundamentals.

Honestly, though, the problem I have is your insinuation there's some artistic seed there people are not seeing. But no one I can see is telling him to change his style, they are telling him where his style is currently in need of improvement.

 

Personally, I think all our observations are valid: The perfectionism, the need for approval, the unwillingness to just relax and go with the flow, and especially how @waitingforzion reacts to criticism. It hurts, of course; we've all been there, but I've seen too much to believe this is all our fault. It's not that I'm unsympathetic, but when pieces are rushed out willy-nilly (and I don't believe for a minute that even at this point in time, the bits being submitted are the best that he's capable of) the truth is going to hurt.

He has even went so far as to say he's feeling less intelligent because we find things to criticise. That needs to stop. It will turn into (and perhaps already has) a vicious cycle. He needs to stop asking himself, "Will my writing ever be good?" and instead focus on solutions. "Ok... the consensus is that it's not great. What can I do to make it better?" Not expect that his work will improve with a wave of a magic wand. He needs to accept that hard graft is grist for the mill. We all have our issues. I have a shit-load, enough that I often want to set down my keyboard and never pick it up again. But I'm proud, and I'm stubborn, and I refuse to be very thing that defeats me.

I'm sensing there are other issues beyond the work itself. I know I'm not alone in that. These might be things that the OP doesn't wish to elaborate on. Certainly I've tried to cultivate a better understanding but didn't even receive a reply to my response to the question he posed to me. A simple, "No offence, but it's not something I'm willing to go into with you," would have sufficed. Problem is, we can't temper and tailor our responses when we are unaware of the underlying problems. A little knowledge can go a long way.

I've visited the workshop thread, and found that despite the advice given recently, the same issues are still at work. This is no bad thing... it tells me that it doesn't matter if he's writing in ponderous or more direct fashion. These are root issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the style he wishes to write in. These are things that can be tackled one by one now they have been identified. Thing is, unless he learns to cultivate his own critical eye, so he can root out these incidences for himself, he's going to have the terminal ear ache and embarrassment of us having to point them out him.

I don't want that for him. And I'm sure no one else does either. Novice, then Journeyman, then Master.

 

@waitingforzion, don't try to focus on beauty at first - you can get that in the rewrites. Focus on clarity first, but if you really do want to have a rhythm and music to your sentences, try writing to music and write to the beat? It might sound like a weird/silly suggestion, but I've found with some people it does work.

 

I know a lot of the aspects of my writing still need a lot of work. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn with writing was to accept critique over praise. There are issues with my work. Mindless praise doesn't fix the issues, taking criticism into account does. It all comes down to whether you'd rather write well or have people say you write well.

Have you tried reading your sentences aloud as you write them? I find that by reading sentences aloud and playing with word choice short sentences can be just as rhythmic as long ones.