Hello! I'm new to this website, so I apologize if this isn't the correct place to post this... I thoroughly believe my writing is pure garbage. I used to be able to write whatever I wanted with so much joy and ease. I didn't care about the quality of what it was, I just wrote because I enjoyed it...that part of me has now died. I can't do that anymore. I hate everything I write and, as a result, writing has become a painstaking process for me and I rarely do it. I used to write hundreds of words a day...now I struggle to write more than a few sentences every few days. I just hate everything. I have a terrible habit of rereading my entire story after I write even a single sentence. I know editing as you write is a terrible idea, but I just can't help myself. Sometimes I'll reread what I've written so far and like it...other times I can't even get past the first paragraph without furiously slamming my laptop shut and bursting into tears. Whenever I go on forums like these, I can't help but compare my writing to everyone else's and it makes me want to throw myself off a bridge. I suck. I don't know what to do. I hate everything that I write. I wholeheartedly believe I'm a terrible writer. I'm mediocre at best. Does anyone else deal with such intense hatred of their own writing? I know a lot of writers are very hard on themselves, but does anyone else truly believe all their work is a steaming pile of horse feces?
Why does it suck? Identifying why is the first step to knowing where to improve. Editing as you write isn't so bad. I do it. Also, just as many writers are too easy on themselves and think everything they do is fantastic, when it isn't (it's often the worst shit out there) and some humility would help them improve. Aim for a balance.
I guess I feel like it just doesn't sound good enough. I'll read a sentence and the words just don't hit right, if that makes sense. It's hard to explain. Sometimes, I just feel like my writing doesn't sound sophisticated enough. I feel like I'm not being descriptive enough and I'm not using enough flowery language and metaphors. I feel like it sounds so bland or my descriptions and metaphors just don't make sense. Some sentences just don't flow the way I feel like they should. It all just sucks.
Agree with Selbbin that humility and self-knowledge are important when it comes to writing. Better to appraise one's own work realistically if you're able to view it with at least a touch of objectivity. From your post, we can all see that you have a good grasp on communicating in written language, and of course no one actually believes that you are 18 as a result. For my own writing, I'm only thinking about whether or not I'd enjoy reading it as a typical reader. For the most part, I think that I do. Try not to overthink it. Get the words out while they're flowing and touch them up a bit later. It need not be sophisticated, however one might qualify that. Your being here to post your overly harsh self-criticism means that you are interested in improvement. Good. Welcome to the community, and good luck in honing the craft.
I do, although for me it affects anything "artistic" I make. For years, I couldn't write, draw, edit videos or compose music because I thought everything I do is a torture for anyone unfortunate enough to experience my work. I used to do these things for fun, it changed when I've finished high school and entered a competitive field. From what I've learned, a lot of that stems from subjective hatred one has for themselves. For me, the self-loathing is directly linked with hopes of achieving outside acceptance with my work, since for years I thought the "artsy" stuff was the only thing I was good at. Since then, I've learned I can do things that I don't expect any externals achievements from. Writing is one of those things so, to some extent, I'm able to do it. Still can't force myself to draw, but I'm working on it. I believe posting on a forum can be very helpful for you. I believe no one's writing has things it excels at, so it would be impossible for anyone with a will to learn to produce pure garbage. Every bad book I ever read came from an author with delusions of grandeur.
Feeling like your writing isn’t good enough is really, really common. Imposter syndrome abounds in any creative field. That being said, that intensity of emotion, slamming your laptop closed and bursting into tears suggests that the there might be something else in your life that’s effecting your attitude towards your writing; I know I always feel worse about my writing when I’m feeling worse about myself in general and other things in my life are going wrong, and it’s the same for many others. Because of that, it might be helpful to look at mindset, instead of skill level. One thing that really helped me was mindfulness. Next time you go to write and you start thinking about how much your writing sucks, acknowledge it. It’ll sound stupid at first, but mentally say, ‘I’m thinking that my writing sucks.’ You want to try to catch yourself before those thoughts really start to spiral. Then, pretend your best friend wrote this, not you, what would you tell them? Find one thing, no matter how small that you like. Even if it’s just a cool vocabulary word or a single line of dialogue. You can also do things that make it more difficult to reread your old writing. Change the ink color to white after you’ve finished. Start in a new document and then copy paste into the main document at the end of your writing session. Write on loose leaf paper and put the earlier papers far away. Write short fiction you can finish in one sitting. The harder it is to reread, the easier it will be to not reread. The best thing about writing is you can always make it better. You can always learn new skills, you can always go back and edit. You probably know that, mentally, now you just need to convince your heart.
You could try changing the way you string words and sentences together. If you search amazon there are some really good books on syntax. When I feel like I've fallen in a rut learning and developing new skills, or expanding on old ones, is a good strategy that makes me feel (and become) shiny and new.
During my career as a working musician (all those many years ago), I worked with a producer told the artists with whom he worked to just keep writing songs, no matter how bad. He said you had to get all the old crap out of your creative head space to make room for the "new stuff"." Perhaps you need to experience something new and different to inspire you. Try going to a museum, attend a book signing, visit a factory, try a new sport... Shake up your life a little. Get passionate about something new. Hopefully that will inject a little inspiration into your creative sessions.
I know editing as you write is a terrible idea, but I just can't help myself. Of course you can. Just takes practice like everything else. Wounded ego is the feeling that one should be much better at something given the amount of time one has invested in practice. Have you ever heard of the concept of equilibrium/disequilibrium? I learned about it when I was raising children. During a period of struggling to learn a new skill, a child goes through a period of disequilibrium where everything is hard and frustrating, resulting in temper tantrums and tears. Once the new skill has been learned, things get easier and the child can cruise for a while with a marked decrease in tears and frustration because the struggle has abated. Give it about six months, and the struggle to learn a new skill begins anew. Learning a new skill as an adult is similar. No matter if it is music, writing, or practicing law, we go through levels of achievement. We reach a new skill level and cruise along for a while, comfortable in what we're doing, but sooner or later that plateau is not enough for us and we struggle to reach the next level of competence. That's hard and frustrating, resulting in temper tantrums, tears, and slamming lap top computers closed. The only way to get past it is to go right through it. The words you put on paper may fall short of what you want them to be, but each word is practice toward that next level of achievement. That is not garbage- that's practice. When frustration gets to be too much to bear, instead of endangering your computer lid or your mental health, take a break: go for a walk, draw a picture, bake cookies, visit a friend, dig in the garden. Once your mind is in balance again, you can write some more. It also helps to differentiate between intelligent evaluation and irrational judgement of what you are producing. "This paragraph doesn't work. Why? How can I fix it?" v. "This is garbage! Everything I write is garbage!" Even a change of wording can help put things in perspective: "This is practice! Everything I write is practice!" Hang in there and don't give up. Sooner or later, the things you write will be much closer to what you want them to be.
I think you're at a point in the process where the creative portion of your mind is being challenged by the analytical part. That doesn't happen in step 1, so that means you're moving down the road. Be glad for that. The creative/analytical struggle is what you're supposed to avoid by not editing. But some people do edit as they go. It can be done. (I edit as I write.) I've always subscribed to the left-brain/right-brain metaphor, to creativity and analysis. It might not be physically true, but it kind of does work in theory. Even these creative AIs they have out there work with this method. There's a creation program and there's an evaluation program. They struggle for a while and in the end the evaluator (the editor) finally lets a result through and calls it success. It's called a generative adversarial network (GAN), and that's how I feel the writing process works too. I think it's always been this way, long before electronics and programs came along. This is how people create and revise. One part of you creates using structures you have absorbed into your voice, and then another part judges them as satisfactory. That might have to do with avoiding stylistic mistakes or giving lines the weight of emotion or making the wording appropriate to the passage. Whatever. There's so much that it's testing. It knows what success looks like. Every writer fights the creative/analytic battle. You compare your work to some great established author and realize that they're beyond you. Then you become despondent because you can't understand why that is. ("Why" is the most difficult question of them all. Of course it's the one that matters most.) The analytic computer program from the GAN is loaded with programmed heuristics. It follows those and it doesn't consider more, but you do. You need to know what to look for. It's hard to tell what makes your writing weaker, and so you can't fix it. One approach is to imitate. (This is what the creative portion of the GAN does.) Keep imitating until you've absorbed a feel for what's right. This is how writers used to be taught. We're talking 19th century here. Find your perfect author and select their best passages. (A fat paragraph or two.) Memorize the absolute best passages. Rewrite sections by hand on paper. This forces you to work slowly. You copy right from the source. Add more sections. Add more authors. Memorize some, practice re-writing a lot. That's it. It will allow you to absorb features of good writing, much like an AI. You need many training sets for it to work, but start small with a couple selections. It pulls in structure and phrasing and transitions. All the tricks that make writing flow nicely. You won't become that one particular author, but if you keep it up, your writing will veer towards theirs. This is basically the old method that was abandoned with the shift to grammar-based writing in the 20th century. These days some herbal-tea types are trying to reclaim the old ways. I'm one of them? Eh, somewhat. But I stress the one point that they tend to leave off. --> Your attempt must involve rigor. <-- You have to commit to the effort. If it was easy, then you (and everyone else) would already be in top form. Edit: eh . . . typos. These days I think I'm winding down. I usually spot the error on a second pass. Usually. haha
I learned this by the terms the hand and the eye, in visual art training. The eye is the ability to see what's wrong with your work. It will develop with practice, and then you need to develop the hand (the part that creates the work). It takes training and practice, but it's the only way we get better. Advancement is in sort of a leap-frog fashion, you reach a new level of ability and after a while you begin to see where you could improve (exactly what @Catriona Grace & @Seven Crowns were talking about).
Try and ask yourself these questions, the answer is lurking somewhere in between the lines. What was your motivation when you "enjoyed" writing versus now... What changed? Are you trying to achieve a goal now (finish a novel, get published) that is different to the goal you had in mind previously? Frustration is an emotion that tells us the expectations we've set for ourselves aren't being met. What are those expectations that you (or others) have of you in the context of writing?
I’ve hesitated to reply to this because I think it’s a complicated subject. Is being critical of your own writing good? Yes. Is hating it good? No. The problem is… Writing is a difficult hobby, because even if you’re the best writer ever born, you’re competing with so many other people that, likely, you will never receive much attention for your work. I’ve been having a hard time writing, recently, and it ended up triggering a psych ward visit. I write to connect to other people, and it’s been my purpose in life for so long… and I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that even if I get crazy good, I’m likely never gonna “succeed” and get published and have a bunch of readers. I spent a long time pouring over my writing, fighting to make it flawless. But you just can’t get there, because “flawless” is so subjective. I read a 2004 John Grisham novel while I was in the psych ward. The man is/was a monumentally successful writer, but if I posted his work here, it’d be torn apart for being too “telly” and too unfocused. So many things we consider “good writing” are just current trends. A couple hundred years ago, it was standard to start stories with a long “introduction” chapter where the characters are slowly introduced and nothing really happens. Now? That’s boring as fuck. No one would read that. I guess what I’m saying is— writing is like playing an obscure variant of poker in a pitch-black room with blank cards and a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who keeps smiling at you. (I’m borrowing from Terry Pratchett here, obviously). Of course you hate writing. You’re trying to make it better, but there’s no actual objective rules for making it better, and even if you DO succeed, you could be the best in the world and no one might read it. It’s insane. Anyway, my advice to you is: Be willing to be bad. Don’t be so hard on yourself. The rules are made up and the points are meaningless. Try to write something that excites you. Good luck.
(Because my last post was long, I'll try to keep this one brief! Wish me luck.) I think I mentioned in a long ago post that there was a creative writing course that was going back to structural imitation. I wish I remembered what it was called. It was sort of an anti-grammar course. (Grammar was in it, but it wasn't the foundation.) What you do, is you take a nice paragraph. You write down a couple key phrases from each sentence. Then, after you've read the paragraph many times, you rewrite the paragraph from memory with the help of your notes. Your paragraph will be different, but it will still hold. The point is that the exercise removes your need to create content. It forces you to absorb structures. It was one of the most genius writing techniques I'd ever seen aimed at kids. (This was a curriculum book.) Usually what's taught in schools follows a formula, and let's face it, those aren't going to create results that are anything more than perfunctory. I've done rewrites with this method a couple of times, and you really can shape a paragraph with it. It's fun seeing it come together. IMO, good and bad writing are decided at the paragraph level. You've got to be able to create lines that pull their weight, but they have to connect correctly too. That's the piece that's always missing. I think it's those connections (sentence cohesion) that the editor in you notices first. AKA, the flow. And your edits are meant to create/strengthen that flow. Eventually you create the starting content too. And then you connect it using what you've absorbed. That's the goal. Anyway, this trick with stellar fiction writers could yield fantastic results. It's a different form of imitation.
I write pretty thin first drafts even though they're super-long. But I also want to write beautiful prose like my favorite authors (Updike, Nabokov, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Carter, Kathe Koja etc.) so I incorporate descriptive passages into my drafts, even though it's like tossing more balls into the ones I'm already juggling. I now have to balance functional, descriptive, poetry, and rhythm along with coherency, plot points and pace. Reading poetry helped. I don't just mean the classics. I found new poets I like - right now I'm reading Campbell McGrath. The good thing about poetry is the condensed quality of imagery, theme, description and the use of powerful verbs. Take even one line of Lord Byron - She walks in beauty like the night - and that one line, written in 1814 is clearer, crisper, fresher than a thousand descriptions written about female characters today. I'm trying to realign my thinking towards this dream-like imagery. Mostly it means breaking apart the way I go into a sentence. Eliminating was's. Trying different things. Short stories really helped elevate my writing because it's much easier to write - and try new things, edit and polish five pages than an over two hundred page novel. You can see the progress without continuing to stay discouraged while trapped in a novel. And it will help to remember this later when you are working on a novel. Though I have to admit aggravation over my writing has never gone away, I've learned to appreciate it because its pushed me to study my favorite writers, improve, and keep going. And if you allow it to push you, not crush you, it can become a powerful motivator.
I think I can write a decent story. I have a wide vocabulary, although my grasp of grammar and structure is intuitive, not learned and is very often leads me to write things in a certain way that doesn't fit with what I want from the story. I often have to rewrite whole paragraphs to get the right story flow. But then, when I compare what I write to, let's say, @Seven Crowns' writing, it'd be very easy to think "why do I bother"? I can't write like that. Then I realise, screw Seven Crowns!* I can only write what I write, concentrate on the things I'm good at and try to improve the other things. At the end, I ask, "Did I tell the story I wanted to tell"? So long as I did to the best of my ability, that's good enough for me. It'd be like trying to compare myself to Meat Loaf. Sure, I can sing properly, and I can do some of the things Meat Loaf did, but I can't do them as well as him or for as loud and as long. So I don't try to be as good as him - as long as I can do as well as I can, that's enough. I ain't no Meat. There's a song lyric in there somewhere. *I'm joking, of course. All bow before the Seven Crowns.
The OP doth protest too much, methinks. 41 repetitions of "I" so far. Me no write about I. We write for readers. They don't care. Readers already have 600 million published novels to choose from. 12 people could have been reading a paragraph of an actual story. Hie thee to the workshop!
I think being self-critical is a good thing, and something all writers/all artists experience. To the OP---that doesn't mean it's bad or that you should "hate" it though. You obviously have the self-awareness necessary to strive for improvement, which is not only crucial - it's a good sign. It's good because when you recognize the need for improvement and seldom feel satisfied, it's a way of seeing the idea that writing is (in my opinion anyway) an imperfect art. It's dynamic and there are always better or different ways to do it. The important thing is to just keep writing and keep learning. I'm guilty of this myself, as I'm rarely satisfied with my work. I won't even open any of my books because I know within 5 seconds I'll realize things I could've done better. All I can do is try to do better next time. Writing, as with any creative art, is nonlinear. Just keep at it and you'll find you will improve over time. Ask any writer here if they believe they are better now than they were three years ago...or even three weeks ago...and almost everyone will say YES.
Sometimes your hatred of your own writing is because you don’t sound like the people you love. You get that feeling in your guts when you read them, and you get a strange synaesthetic sense of place from them - yet you don’t get that from your own work. I understand that disappointment. I wrote songs for years and managed to get albums released on a tiny indie label. The label kept us on the books as a labour of love, but I never thought we sounded right. Same with every other band I’ve been in. I just got published, doing an introductory guide to a philosopher. The publisher sang its praises, but when I read through the edits I just don’t feel it. Why? Because neither the music nor the lyrics nor this book sound like the people I love. They sound like me, and other people seem to like that! I just need to know what my sound/voice is and then I’ll learn to love it. Maybe that’s part of it. But everyone else is probably right too.
I dunno, I totally edit as I go. I don't want 80k words of steaming mess at the end of the book. I want something half-decent to look at lol. However, it's important to set limits for yourself. I only ever read ONE scene prior, and if I see that I'm not making any changes anymore and just rereading for no reason, I move on. I allow myself to reread and edit about 2-5 times. It works fine. You need to learn to analyse what makes you feel like it's not good. How do you want it to sound, and what do you need to change to get there? Has anyone ever critiqued your work? It sounds like you need feedback. But given how sensitive and terrible you feel right now, getting critique on your work might not be productive right now. You can learn to analyse writing by critiquing other people's writing. Go to the Workshop and leave people some feedback - what's working? What isn't? Why? How can you improve it? It's easier to crit someone else's writing because it's less personal, but then as these things become more and more obvious to you as you keep analysing writing, you'll start to apply the same principles to your own writing, and your own writing will improve as a result. Go pick up a book you really love, whose writing you admire - what about it do you love? How did this author achieve THIS effect right here? Read and reread and analyse it. Then apply what you've learnt to your own writing. It may also help just to write some short snippets, little pieces without ambition of it becoming a book - just to take the pressure off yourself. Experiment a little. If it doesn't work, that's ok because it wasn't the book you wanted to publish anyway. Try another angle, another piece, and keep moving until you gain some confidence. Once you do, it's time to start getting critique on your own work. 10+ years ago I was told I sucked - I was just starting out and it was one of the first times I'd ever got critique on my writing, and I got it from strangers on this forum. There was one particular user who's no longer here who went around offering help to newbies who wanted it, with a facade of a warm mamma here to guide, and she trashed every last thing I ever sent her. She told me I sucked so bad, I should stop writing and stop wasting my time, because it's never gonna get any better. Oh, how I cried. And eventually, after a week or so, I told myself: If I don't write, I will not improve. And as long as I'm learning, I will improve. Even if my writing sucked (which it didn't), it is my writing RIGHT NOW that sucked. Not my writing tomorrow. Not my writing in 2 years' time. Not my writing in 10 years' time. RIGHT NOW it sucked. And that's not forever. As long as I kept writing. Keep learning. Keep improving. Keep going. The comment was on this one piece of work, not my potential as a writer. Big difference. Big, big BIG difference. I kept writing. Let's just say I've come a long way. 11 requests to date on my book - who knows if I'll get rep eventually? I'm close to shelving, but I keep going. Growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. You need not only to grow thicker skin, but better confidence, so you don't crumble at the first negative feedback. I say I've had 11 requests - but do you know how many form rejections I've had? Over one hundred and sixty. And you gotta keep going even in the face of that amount of rejection. You haven't even started this journey yet. This is a tough industry, and the first thing is, you've got to believe in yourself. Believe in your own potential, and learn, learn, learn. Believe in yourself, or you won't last. But if you're willing to learn, who knows where you can be in 5 years' time? Sky's the limit. Take a leap of faith - you owe it to yourself.
It's because your doing to much comparison to others writings. It's something that I suppose to be expected in a way, as you dive more into the craft but it simply is not a good habit to have. You wrote for you and you enjoyed it. That is literally all that matters when it comes to this. If you don't like your own writing and don't have confidence in your own vision for whatever you're writing no one else will. When you get back to not caring about what others think or doing it to impress others then all that self hatred will go away. I write my own stuff, my own way, for my own purpose at times specifically to spite the comparison thing. I'd rather be a no name writer that no one has read or have a style that doesnt fit what is popular, than to be published with a million dollar book deal I got by compromising my values and own integrity.
If someone offered me a million dollar book deal, I'd probably churn out whatever the hell they needed, slap a pseudonym on it, and use the proceeds to spend the rest of my life writing to suit myself.
