You misunderstand that to mean my career is passionless. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fiction writing, I'm all about the challenge. I strive to do the best of my ability and to write better each day than the last, and then when it's done I let it go. In my non-fiction, the passion is for the opportunities writing brings, and the doors it opens (meeting interesting people and doing interesting things). "The journey, not the destination." ETA: I should also add that I came from a newspaper background with tight deadlines.
You compared your writing to doing laundry. You must be significantly more passionate about folding clothes than I am. If you say you're passionate about writing, then I'll believe you. But imo your original post suggests the opposite.
I chose that metaphor because it applies to the satisfaction of having completed a job to the best of my ability. If we want to stick with the word passionate while using the laundry metaphor, it would probably be accurate to say I'm "passionate" about having the best possible end product for my laundry efforts and am therefore "passionate" about challenging myself to do the best job possible. I'm deliberate during the laundry process...picky about sorting, using mesh bags for small items, using Color Catchers, hanging certain items on hangers to air dry, hanging jeans on pant hangers so there's a crease down the front of the legs...but that doesn't mean the task itself is enjoyable. And once it's done to the best of my ability, I'm onto the next thing without another thought. The rush is in the challenge. It is true that if I could get that same rush from something other than writing, I would, and do (I ping pong back and forth between writing and another rush-providing gig). Most writers get their rush from approval for what they've written. Mine just happens to be during a different part of the process, but neither is right or wrong.
You get a rush from the "challenge" of doing laundry? I don't get it, but it sounds like it's working for you.
everyone has different approaches to writing but i think this is one of the most fascinating approaches i've heard. it's pretty sick though, don't you think?
I really like my work. I like my ideas, some of the things I write can make me laugh. Being pleased with it as a whole is harder. I'm in the middle of editing, polishing, rewriting my WIP. This month has been especially hard because of the weather and life throwing me a couple of curve balls so there has been over two weeks when I didn't work on anything or read any of my work. When I came back to it I was like - sigh - some of it didn't sound as good as I thought. But I don't go into panic mode. That's the beauty of editing there's always a chance to improve. I also like discovering what I can do with a theme. I've been trying over these last five years to bring more depth into my work and it's a fun challenge to write layered.
Most writers, including ones being routinely traditionally published? I've been writing for a few years and I've gotten very little feedback. Sometimes people will say something nice like, "I found very little wrong with your prose," or, "I liked it," or even worse, "it is brave of you to put yourself out there," (which is always the wrong thing to say) but I don't have any fans. I have done an awful lot of writing to little reward, BUT I get into flow states sometimes when I'm writing, and that's the feeling I crave. I can't imagine someone getting a rush from approval as their main driver and enduring to the point of getting good. There is jut no way. Approval from anyone but mom and wife is so far from common for most of us for so long. Worse, once you start getting good, you start to realize that there are bad critiques with agendas, like pecking order mentality or confusing narrow taste for good taste or just not thinking you should be writing at all, that make positive feedback barely more likely from strangers even after you improve. If I wrote for approval, I'd be done. On any given day, I can do a variety of other things to get approval way faster than writing. Writing is a primary source of disapproval if anything.
Not saying it doesn't sound weird, but there was a long period when I couldn't work due to vertigo, and I would much rather be at work than doing household tasks. So, I gamified it: *looks at laundry pile* "You are mine, and you're gonna be the best-looking laundry in town." Actually, given the amount of rejection inherent in the profession, and the brutality of comment sections when a non-fiction article goes live, it's probably fairly healthy. I know a lot of writers who crumble when they see the comments for what they thought was a great piece (and probably was--trolls abound in comment sections). Conversely, I've already moved on, because at that point it's out of my control. The comments mean nothing because I already got my joy out of it. Actually, yeah, I do know a lot of writers who crave that approval, many of them very good. Modern day journalism and social media provide nearly instant feedback, and some people absolutely crave it. But even before internet publishing, you'd always see writers scrambling to see the Letters to the Editor page. Hang out on social media for a while, and you'll see plenty of best-selling authors who are motivated by it, too.
It sounds like you're mostly getting feedback from other aspiring or established writers. Don't get me wrong, that has its benefits, but it also has its drawbacks.
Here's what I would recommend, open up a document on the computer, just a blank, simple document and then look around the room. Pick out an object from the room and begin to describe it, that can help jump start you into the writing mode. You can also go on a walk and carry a notepad with you and write down things that strike your interest. These methods usually help me.
I've been up and down this trap probably since I started writing. My love-hate relationship with my work has proven to be an ongoing process. I can love something one day only to hate it the next. It's quite hard to judge the quality of our prose, at least for me it is. But when I really work something and put in countless revision, something new always seems to rise from my original scribbling. I have found that when I really work a piece of writing it can become better than I thought it could be. Honestly, I don't really know how I do it, but when something reads better than I thought I could write I'm back on the up. However, my confidence is probably always a little shaky.
Sorry if this isn’t the right forum, I’ve looked over the others and this seems like the right one. OK so I’ve been writing for a little while now, and it’s really bothering me. I’ve got a lot of old stories I’ve written but are yet to be completed , the problem is whenever I reread them I find I’m totally embarrassed to think I actually wrote that, so most of the time I stop reading it and I'm reluctant to go back to reading/finishing it. Has anyone else had this problem? If so how do I get over it thanks in advance
Yes all the time. When you read it, do you actually think it's bad? Often times, I cringe before I read it but then realize it's actually not bad and often even pretty decent. Do you get anticipatory anxiety about anything else or just the writing? I'm an anxious person anyway.
It sounds like you're walking away from a lot of unfinished rough drafts. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it sounds like it isn't working for you. I try to stick to one small chunk of writing--usually one scene--until it's polished to a level that's pleasing to me, or at least polished to be the best that I can reasonably achieve with my current level of skill. It's rare for that to be less than four editing passes. Now, there's a limit to how long I'll chew on that piece of writing--if I've been working on one scene for more than, oh, five days, it's time to give up and move on to the next one. So you might want to try forcing yourself to finish things. Even if you don't end up pleased, by finishing a piece you're forcing yourself to go through the parts that are hard for you, and you'll get better, piece by piece.
That's a good thing, though. That feeling means you're looking at them with all of the things you've learned since you wrote them. If you felt the same way now as you did then, that would mean you haven't been advancing much as a writer. So bear that embarrassment with pride. We may not be great, but at least we're better!
Congrats on improving your taste over time. You should try rewriting a story with good bones to see if you can make it good enough for your current tastes. Hopefully you’ll look back and not like it either.
Old writing is like those baby pictures your mom likes to show your new girlfriends. You know which pictures I mean -- the ones that make people, and young women in particular, laugh and point and turn to you, saying "But it got bigger, I hope?" But being as you were in those pictures didn't bother you when you were a baby. You didn't know any better.
I've seen and felt the same things at times, then other times I rather like my old writing. It's a window into my mindset of the time. I see images of my past. Aspirations come and gone, morals and values as they developed. They are portals to realms long since abandoned. I like to know where I came from and how I have improved in writing to understand what has improved. What factors I was caught up in at the time that have been carried over to the present, and those which have been replaced. With my own writing from before I found I am much more calm. I used to be such an angry and troubled person and it showed in anything I did. Hated that for awhile. Calmed even more, and now I can look back at them as references. I dont attempt to edit those works anymore, since most no longer apply to me. I just look to them to see where I've grown, and where I could still use the help.
I think it's a combination of growth over time as a writer, and as also mentioned here, anxiety. I think it's easy to be sort of penetrating and clinical about your own writing because you have a different perspective on it and you're more expecting it to need polishing than a finished work you read. So you can fussy and full of doubts. I find this particularly with dialogue. It's often easy to fuss about whether dialogue is cringy.
All the time. It's natural. Like the others have said - you notice things which you wouldn't necessarily write now: Sentences that aren't structured correctly, passive language, wordy paragraphs, irrelevant exposition, dialogue that sounds manufactured rather than natural (that's a biggie for me). It's good to go back and read your old stuff, it put the present in perspective, and everyone loves that 'semi ego-trip' when you realise the amount of improvement that has happened, maybe just with time and practice alone. I find it motivational too, because that improvement isn't really visible in day-to-day writing. I think it was in Stephen King's 'On Writing' where he describes how he would lay a manuscript aside for weeks without reading it - the time itself allowing him to compartmentalise and then re-read his work as if he was the reader, rather than the writer; illuminating mistakes that he would otherwise have been blind to. If it's something you wrote recently, try reading them aloud. Get used to how your own voice sounds and feels - it will feel awful if you've never done it, but most good things do to begin with. Reading aloud is also a good device in general which can bring to light a lot of thing that need looking at/re-considering.
I absolutely cringe at my older stuff. I'll finish a book then go back to the beginning to start editing and its like, "Oh dear God. Really?" Just keep going. Edit what you want to finish, disregard the rest. best of luck.
