I don't cringe when I read my own writing, generally, but when I put sex scenes in stuff I do kinda...get a reaction while doing so which in retrospect makes it seem more hot and bothered when I re-read it later. Not that I mind, I kind of was aiming for "steamy" with the romance plots in my work, but yeah it's kind of something I would prefer OTHER people read more than, like, my mother.
Yeah, I cringe at some of the stuff I wrote twenty or thirty years ago. But we're in good company. Gene Fowler, one of the great writers of the last century, wrote: "Sometimes when I look at a thing I've written I get the feeling that I must have gone out of the room and left the typewriter running."
i cringe more when i hear myself speak. my voice is either a high pitched hyena or mumbling monotone. i really envy those baritone articulate radio program presenters
I absolutely cringe when I re-read the first draft of my (very long) novel, which was completed 18 years ago. Now that I've finally finished the final draft, I can say I'm pleased with it. I think @ChickenFreak has the right idea. Next time you write something—unless you want to go back to one of those older pieces instead—make a point of finishing it. Then edit it. Again and again. Till you are pleased with it. Then give it to some other people to read, pay attention to what their reaction is. Make more changes. Give it to another group of readers, and keep repeating this process till the feedback is mostly all positive, and you are happy that you've done all you can. I think this gets easier and less time-consuming as you progress, because what you've learned revising your effort can be applied to your next story. I think very few of us look on our first efforts from Days of Yore with satisfaction. Most of these efforts ARE cringeworthy. But that will happen in any sphere of life. We make mistakes as we learn.
Happens to the best of us! Do this. Typing "The End." is a big confidence booster no matter how much you still have to learn or grow. You might even find you're not as far from perfection as you think. Take it from someone with years worth of unfinished works and only recent finished drafts. "The End." is a big deal. With that in mind, you might benefit from the "write strait through" method. I'm halfway through a book I've only been working on for a few months. That's record pace for me, and I've never gotten this far in a project. I will probably want to cry when I try to edit a few of the passages I forced my way through, but I've done the same with a few short stories along the way, and it is SO much easier than going back to a piece I abandoned months or years ago. Write every day (or as often as you can) and give yourself word count or scene quotas to force yourself to get something on the page, even when you're feeling self conscious. Most importantly, let your first draft be a first draft. You can deal with what you don't like the second time through. It's not the only method that works for people, but it sounds like your "to be finished someday" pile might get as tall as mine did, so it's worth a try. I know from similar threads on this forum and from the dozens of author interviews and other bits of advice I found before starting fresh, that everyone feels these things, even Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. Authors hate so many things about their first drafts, especially, especially the first sentence. It's almost universal, even with writers who've made millions and been told they're geniuses for decades. As a rule, we are not a confident bunch. The big difference is that they persevered despite their self-sabotaging instincts. You can too. Good luck, and welcome to WF! It's been a big help to me and a lot of fun. I hope it will be for you too.
Do you read much? Writing style is contagious, and that includes bad writing. When I was a staffer on a magazine we had a contributor who sent us..."interesting" copy (OK, it was total bollocks, but our editor was too nice to say no). If I had to sub his work, and then write my own feature I'd cringe reading my own work back because I'd picked up this contributor's poor writing. The only way to improve is to read, write and edit. Something will "happen" and you will start to produce work that you are proud of, not ashamed of. But you need to think of your writing skill as a muscle. If you don't keep building it and flexing it, it will waste. Starting one draft, and giving up, then half half-heartedly moving onto the next thing is like going to the gym for two weeks - it needs to become a habit before you see improvement.
That's a good point. I think that if you actually finish a work and move on to editing it—as a whole, not just a sentence here or there—you will see what went wrong, and learn to sort it and make it better. If you get in the habit of just walking away whenever you're dissatisfied, then you're going to do a lot of walking away.
A big part of writing is rewriting. I make significant changes along the way and/or after finishing just about everything I write. I hate a messy draft, but even a clean draft is still a draft. I don't think I cringe so much as look for opportunities to save my story and improve upon it. All that matters is the finished product. It doesn't matter how you get there, but this whole writing thing is more work than it seems to be. It's harder than it should be. But anyone is capable of writing and improving. It takes a lot of time and practice to improve our skills. If you really hate everything you write, think about taking a class. I love writing classes and have learned a lot from them. Sometimes we need a push in the right direction, and that can change everything.
There's a lot of good advice in this thread now, especially mine. I'm kidding! You should definitely take it all to heart, even the seemingly contradictory stuff, because different methods work for different writers, and plenty of people absolutely swear by each of these methods. Let me ask you though, because we may be able to give advice that's less general, what is it about the writing that causes you to doubt its merit? Does it seem over-thought, pretentious or under-developed? Is the vocabulary not up to par or just the opposite, too esoteric? Is the dialogue unbelievable? Do you see major plot holes? Do you have trouble finishing because you can't think where to take the story next? What are the specific issues as you see them? If you don't have specifics reasons, then what are the general feelings you get when you read it beyond "cringing?" Are you bored, annoyed, confused? Why? Also, do these issues differ from piece to piece or maybe even change consistently over time? While building confidence and growing as a writer, there are likely specific tricks and methods you could employ to improve almost any issue you might recognize. It's all good and well to improve on your own. All this stuff about learning from your own writing (and reading and editing) is absolutely true, but if there are ways to tackle specific hurdles, skip that part of the learning process and grow from there. Athlete and musicians gets better through practice, but proper technique is always worth learning. (Not that there is a "correct" way to write, as I'm sure you know.) Personally, I always thought that I should be able to write because I had specific, innate talents that I saw as vital, and the rest would just fall into place. It should all just come naturally. Hundreds of thousands of words on unfinished projects seem to have proven otherwise. Finally deciding to do some research and ask for help with my specific pitfalls and hindering habits six months ago has changed my life. So much so that a lot of members are no doubt tired as hell of hearing about my "new strategy" and how well it's going (so far. ) So give us some specifics, and maybe we can assist further.
Several drafts and a lot of polishing later, you'll probably come to like your own writing. You're not alone, you know.
Worry more if you don't cringe, unless you're already well established with a loyal readership. The learning curve is, and should be, steep for a new writer, even for a "kinda new" writer. As long as you are cringing, you are learning. You didn't cringe when you wrote it, but by the time you've gone back and read it, your critical eye has become keener. This is not a bad thing. It is a very good thing. As long as your critical eye outpaces your writing hand, you are improving. And if you are well-established and have stopped cringing, you've become complacent and are on the path to stagnation.
So I've been writing for a few years now, but I feel like I'm not improving anymore, and that my skills might actually be declining. I'm not sure what exactly my style is and I can't seem to write anything interesting or come up with any cool ideas. It's been like this for over a year now. Every time I share my writing with somebody, I get harsher and harsher criticism. I can't tell if that's just because I'm getting older and people aren't sugarcoating things for me as much (I'm about to turn 17) or if it's because my writing just isn't as great as it used to be. How do I get my motivation back and improve my writing skills? Any advice is appreciated.
Try writing outside of your preferred genre(s) In terms of motivation, it will ebb and flow. What used to motivate you?
From what I know, when I was 17, pretty much everything I wrote was crap, but I keep it as a reminder of how far I have come in terms of writing. So you see just keep at it and look for inspiration from all sorts of other media, or even just what you experience in everyday life. Something will spark your imagination, just give yourself a chance to breathe. Let it come to you, cause you can't force it to happen, it has to flow freely and organically. Good luck.
What Cave Troll says, Plus, Try writing something completely new, maybe a short story or flash fiction, there's a contest here every month for that, you don't even need to submit it if you don't like it. but short stuff is a lot easier to analyse and see what's good and what's bad, also it doesn't take forever, so slashing it to bits afterwards is less hurtful! also flash and short stories give you an opportunity to try new things, new genres, new voices etc without getting totally invested in them. When I was 17 my writing was probably the worst in the world. I've now got books published and even make money from my ranting and raving. Stick with it kiddo, you never know where it'll take you if you give it a chance. It's also worth considering that if other people don't like your work, it might be their bad, not yours. Worth a thought at least. It might even be true, once in a blue moon.
Yup. Look for critique where your age is unknown. If you suspect your old writing was better, post that too and see how it does. Don't write for praise, and don't judge your writing on praise. Even when it is of great quality, it might not be what your audience likes or understands.
Re the appearance that your skills are declining: Is it possible that as you get older your ambition is increasing, but your skills aren't increasing as much as your ambition? If you aren't focusing on improving your performance in simple, clean, plain writing, you might want to try that.
I would highly suggest taking up reviewing on here or another site instead of just writing more. I've improved tenfold by being able to take apart other member's work and try to properly and effectively communicate the problems I find. The more confident you get in reviewing other's work, the better you will be in editing and writing your own. You will also begin to understand not only grammatical or superficial errors, but you will also be able to interpret fundamental issues and logical fallacies in the pieces you choose to review. Also, you're young. As you gain more life experience, you have more to write about. Trust me. My work at seventeen certainly resembled my mindset at the time. A lot will change.
Thank you everyone for the advice. I guess I am pretty young to have good writing skills and I should know that, but lately I've been comparing my work to people who are younger than me and feeling bad about myself. I have to remember that everyone works at different paces and some people don't improve as quickly as others. I've also noticed that a lot of my writing revolves around the same things. @EFMingo helped me realize that a lot of my characters actually have the same mindset as mine, and no matter how diverse my characters are, it will be difficult to make my work interesting if everyone is the same and if everything I write is just a different version of my life. I might actually write a short story for a contest. I've gotten started on one about a man with schizophrenia who believes he is doing God's work. Might be a bit freaky though haha. And I'll definitely try reviewing other people's work. I've done it a few times before, and sometimes it helps me see flaws in my own writing that I wouldn't have noticed before.
Perhaps as you become a more experienced writer, you are becoming a lot more critical about what you write. I see this not only in my writing, but reading and watching films too. Whereas anything would tend to satisfy me, I put down a lot more books than I did even a few years ago. The same with film: I was very easy to please - loved all of those mindless action films. Now simply because I have watched so many films, I'm thinking about the plot, I know the tropes. When I first started writing, I was already planning on how I would spend my royalties! That gave me the momentum to power through. By the time I set to writing my second, I had a better idea of what I was doing. Now I'm forever finding ways to improve my writing.
Do you feel you've improved? How does your current work compare with your older work? If you genuinely feel your older work was better, what makes it better? As for harsher and harsher criticism - beware who you trust with your work. Find people with whom you have some rapport and whose writing and opinion you respect, and who respects your work. It's ok to be wise about whom you become vulnerable with. Just because all critique is supposedly valuable doesn't mean you have to expose yourself to all of it. If a problem exists, a gentle (but insightful) critic would be able to point it out as much as a harsh critic could, except the gentle one would build you up and help while the harsh one is there to tear you down. You do the maths. Find someone who's there to build you up. That doesn't mean someone who praises you. That means someone who points out your errors with the genuine intention to help you develop. And regarding the criticism you've already received - are there points that different people have repeated? Focus on those points, because if multiple people have pointed it out, then it's probably a real problem. Ignore the rest for now. Lastly, go in with a growth mindset. You're learning. Even if you suck - let's say you absolutely, horrifically suck at writing - so bloody what? You will learn. And you will get better, and better, and better. The goal is not to be good at writing per se - the goal is to get better at writing. One piece of crappy work doesn't define you as a writer. If your first piece sucked, well make the second one better. You can always learn, and so long as you're learning, you can always get better. And as long as you're getting better, that's all that matters. You're only 17. Give yourself time. Give yourself a chance. Also, don't keep looking for critique. (another critical thing: don't look for it too soon. If you push out a rough draft and get harsh feedback back, well what else did you expect? Give yourself time to edit and polish and let your work sit for a bit.) There are times when work should be kept private, to be enjoyed, to hell with quality. Sometimes, you just need to have fun Allow yourself that. Have fun.
Hard to give advide without knowing what you're being criticized for. Back in 2016, when I was in my mid-50's, I began my WIP. Even at that age, what I wrote then was terrible, I see that now. Since then I've done three things: read a lot of books on writing craft: see https://www.writingforums.org/threads/i-suck-at-this.161627/#post-1760331 applied what was in those books by writing, a lot. got stuff critiqued Now, I think my writing is much better, and a professional editor who looked at it called it "strong." No way she'd have said that three years ago. Writing doesn't come naturally to most. Reading won't teach most people how to write. So if you haven't read books on writing, do so.
