everytime i go back and read a piece i wrote, i end up hating it. so you aren't along, i guess in a way its a good thing for it means you want to improve and believe you can, but in another sometimes in reaching for that piece of 'perfection' you kill the origin of the story, that magic. writing can be a pain, but its what writers do lol best writing to you CoS
I can’t say I have ever really “hated” anything I have written so far. I’m not someone who really turns out much material really though, I generally take my time and think things out (not as in plotting, but just general flow, mood). I do sometimes feel like I have a large chain and ball attached to me. I wonder if I’ll ever actually get to the state where I can close everything off and be at a junction where I can either close the adventure off, or if I want, try and send if off to an agent. But when I look back at all the difficulties, I actually smile, thinking to myself, well hey at least I know I can improve this. Spotting ones flaws is a good thing, no matter how big or how small. I do remember my first "attempt" at writing a story. I look back and wonder why i even wanted to write it. Funny though, my first attempt was much better then my second attempt (different story). At the time i had never heard of info dumping, and i had every plot set-up within the first chapter......I tried to read it once afterwards (a few years later), It was...painful. But the things i have learnt since really is worth those painful efforts of early attempts.
Yep. I do this all the time. I got so frustrated with the novel I was working on that I put it away. Sometimes it's the choices I made for the characters, things about them, or that happened to them that just didn't work. I had a new idea the other day, and am about 3k into it. Totally different characters, totally different genre. I just started writing it after I stalled out on my other story. I decided that I needed to file the characters away, let them stew a little more, and maybe come back to it later when a fresh idea hits me. I just let it go. Sometimes ideas just don't work out the way we envisioned them. I find it no reason to get discouraged, because it just means the story isn't done percolating. Maybe the characters weren't right for the setting, maybe the setting wasn't right for the characters, maybe the wording just wasn't clear enough, whatever the problem with it, the idea is what is important. You can't throw an idea away. It will still haunt you, even years later. If you can't feel yourself salvaging the story, save it to a cd, memory stick, or something and store it away. Maybe you'll want to dig it out some day in the future. Just move on to your next idea without giving the old one another conscious thought. Your subconscious will now do the work for you on your old story.
If you read as much as possible and Critique (like on this site) and read peoples critiques of others, you'll spot them trust me
Flaws may be too strong a word. A piece of writing may be uniformly good, but not great. Even so, some word, sentence, or paragraph will still be the weakest link, because it's just a bit more ordinary than the rest, or just doesn't add anything new (not elsewhere covered). That;s where you start picking. Could it be juiced up a bit? Could it be deleted entirely? Or maybe it's something missing. Maybe when you read it, you keep mixing up which one is Gary and which is Greg - suggest changing one of the names to make them more distinct. Or perhaps the characters themselves are simply not distinct from eac other (try to keep straight Merry vs. Pippin through the early parts of Lord of the Rings). Maybe the prose just rolls along smoothly, but it can't hold your interest. Is that a flaw? Maybe, but that's where putting your finger on it can be difficult. Sometimes, all you can do is say, "Try as I might, I can't tell you why this paragraph drags for me, but it does." That might not directly help the writer, but it might make the next reviewer focus on that parargraph, and come up with some possible reasons why it doesn't work. At that point, everybody wins.
I never much like what I've written when I go back to it weeks or months later. Sometimes I cringe at what I wrote and wonder how I could ever have thought it was ok.
Very often do I end up tweaking or rewriting things that I've already written. If I really hate a section I've written it is generally because it is not yet finished. I can't recall parts of 'finished' text that I hate. I might have disliked writing it though.
no matter what people say about my work even if they say its the best thing they have ever read i always think its rubbish!
Haha, i'm the same. That said, the people that have read mine is my wife and my mother-in-law The former is just bias. I mean hello to the rule of letting family and friends read your work. The later - She must have been having a good day, or something!
Thanks for the comments I guess what I'm trying to see - how do you separate the internal criticque from making you rewrite your stuff, constantly striving for perfection or dumping it in a box for years to a place where you know you will never be satisifed with it but sending to an agent because other people have said it's good. aaarghhhhhhhh!!!!
Every minute of every day! And this isn't just in writing. In my eyes, there is nothing I am good at and I am doomed to fail at every single thing I try. Yeah I know, HORRIBLE mentality, but hey, I confidence issues. lol
I'll bet you'd find (if you could see deep inside) many exceptional authors (maybe most, even all) whose exceptionality arises out of exactly that kind of inner conflict. Imagination is a fabulous antidote. The kicker is the skill every writer learns as he goes, never knowing for sure when he's nailed it. But somewhere along the way--if you're lucky, persistent, and patient--you may discover your niche. If not, you'll at least uncover the enormous rewards and benefits of the creative journey itself (and the real truth may be there are more of those than the rewards and benefits of commercial success). That's just my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
Sometimes I'm pretty dissatisfied with my stuff, but a lot of the time I'm pretty proud of it. Just depends on how motivated I am.
I will usually jot down my idea for a scene like a list. "So and so does this, and then this happens, so and so feels this when this happens and this makes him/her do this," etc. etc., and then I mull it over for a few days, working it into a more structured form that is ALWAYS crap and then I just continuously revise and revise it molding it into a scene until I'm happy with it. So I kind of begin with the expectation that it's going to suck at first but the more I keep going back to it and elaborating, the better it becomes. Editing like this is a never ending process so just keep going back to it and in time the right words, descriptions etc., will come to you.
Hi, everyone! I wanted to know from all you other writers, aside from getting published and writer's block, what would you say is the hardest part about writing? For me it would be finding the right story to tell. I've only ever tried my hand in fiction because there's so much more you can do. But I have no idea what to write about anymore. When I first started writing I loved writing horror stories, but that's just not in me anymore. So now I try to search for something that I think other people would like to read as well as something that I will be satisfied with. My other big problem is staying committed to the idea and the story. What I usually do is write 5-10 pgs then quit and move onto the next idea...I've probably done that about 30-50 times in the past 10 years.
The redrafting and editing. Sometimes you just don't want to take some sentences out; they are almost always thrown out of the 'Finished Story' hall kicking, and screaming, and scraping their nails along the floor: just trying to stay in there with the other cool sentences.
The hardest part for me is knowing that I'll never have time to get all the ideas written that I have. There just are too many, more arrive each day, and I'm never going to finish them all. I, too, am not a huge fan of the great swampy middle of novels, but I've learned some tricks for getting through them, so it gets easier as I go.
I never had a problem with the middle, or the begining - I only ever have a slight problem with the end, and that's when I've not planned a story out well enough. When this happens I just put the story to one side and let it mature a bit more.
I love the editing and polishing part. But I find the final proof readings mentally exhausting. Proofing another person’s work is O.K. But I find the amount of concentration required to proof my own work is very draining. I think it’s because I know that the brain has a tendency to skip over errors and “see” what one is hearing in one’s head. So I am very slow and methodical, reading every word aloud when I touch it with my finger. It’s so tiring though.
I struggle with staying focused on what I'm writing. Ideas for new stories come to me and I get all excited about them and plot them in my head and start to lose interest in my current work. I have finished a couple of books but they haven't been very good so that's also a bit of a problem...
