Embarrassed by your own words?

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Word Jedi

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Has anyone here ever written anything, and upon reading it a couple days later, found themselves embarrassed by corny dialogue, clunky scenes and other such things that made you shiver and look over your shoulder, thankful that no one else was reading it too?
 

Cranky

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Yeah, I'm embarrassed daily by that stuff. *shrug*

It can all be edited into passable prose, even brilliance, later on. Try not to sweat the ugly.
 

maestrowork

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All the time. That's what rewrites are for.... :)

I may be brilliant, but I'm not brilliant all the time. And even a diamond needs to be cut and polished before it shines...
 
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dpaterso

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"Embarrassed" is too strong a term. Knew it could be improved, certainly.

-Derek
 

kct webber

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Embarrassed? No. It's all part of the process. Everyone sucks once. I'm aware that I have stuff that's in serious need of improvement--and some stuff that will never become anything. But embarrassment is not really an issue for me.
 
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When I read back over 'intimacy' scenes, yes. Anything else, I look at, shrug, and say, "Meh. It can be improved." But there's one aspect of human relationships that embarrasses me to write. But I still do it, because it's part of life and needs to be written for my characters to seem real.

As others have said - you rewrite, you get over it.
 

inkkognito

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I'm mortally embarrassed by a few instances where mistakes made it through editing and ended up getting published in a magazine. Mostly it's just a little typo, but once it was a little more major than that. Not that it happens a lot, and many people probably don't even notice, but whenever I look back over those clips it still bugs me big time.
 

Cybernaught

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I certainly feel pity for the English language when I go back to revise my rough drafts. I end up slapping my forehead and asking myself "How could I possibly have written that?"

But recognizing these faults is good. It means you're improving as a writer and that you can look at your own work objectively. If there ever comes a day when I look at my rough draft and praise it, I'd seriously think something was wrong with my writing.
 

gypsyscarlett

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No. Drafts are drafts. I already know there is plenty of fixing to do in the future.

My greatest fear is dropping dead before I am able to fix it. That makes me cringe in horror. :scared:
 
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Oh good god, yes.

*now has horror of someone finding my still-twitching corpse beside a laptop full of unedited novels*
 

Cranky

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No. Drafts are drafts. I already know there is plenty of fixing to do in the future.

My greatest fear is dropping dead before I am able to fix it. That makes me cringe in horror. :scared:

:eek:

No!
 

Prawn

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Yep, but the things that bother me are never even noticed by my betas. Maybe I am over-sensitive.
 

steveg144

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Has anyone here ever written anything, and upon reading it a couple days later, found themselves embarrassed by corny dialogue, clunky scenes and other such things that made you shiver and look over your shoulder, thankful that no one else was reading it too?

Constantly. Perhaps even more cringe-worthy are the ones that are truly truly bad, but somehow managed to get published. Now they're out there forever, shaming me, taunting me ... ;)
 

eLfwriter

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Oh, yeah, all the time. But usually I wait a couple days before allowing myself to go back and rewrite, otherwise I'd never get any new writing done. It's not immediately bad unless someone walks in and non-chalantly saunters over to 'see' what I've been 'doing' ... which is just fancy talk for 'spy on the eccentric typist who reads too many books and likes to talk about elves'.

It all has failsafe pattern. You must not sway from the pattern.

Brother: Hey, pointy-ears, what'cha working on? (peers over my shoulder)

Laptop: *SLAMs shut*

Me: Oh, you know, that novel-thing I've been typing away at ...

Brother: Really? Novel, huh? Which one? The necromancer one?

Me: Uh, yeah ... uh, no ... y'know. The one with the elves.

Brother: REeeEAAlllLLY .... are you sure you weren't lurking on AW and talking to your virtual friends? You know there's only 14 days left in NaNoWriMo and you only have 36, 000 words ... you're not going to get done if you spend all your time on that writer forum ...

Me: Shut up! I'm doing research!

*throws nearest paper-crumple at brother-type-figure*


meh, s'all good.

*now has horror of someone finding my still-twitching corpse beside a laptop full of unedited novels*

AHHHHAhaaahhhahHH!

OMG, now I'm not going to sleep tonight. I have to finish everything just in case I step outside tomorrow and get runover on the way to the library or something.

Where are those back up disks?!? EVERYTHING MUST BE BURNED!! They must not be allowed to read the mush pile!!! With my family, they'll probably end up reading all the worst bits at my funeral or something.

Family: Oh, and this one's from her very first ever WiP, the knock-off from that show, Sliders. We found it buried under her bed with all the clothes and dustbunnies. Here, we'll share some of the bad macho-posing dialogue between these two guys ... their names are seriously 'Moss' and 'Frost'. Listen to this one, people ...

My ghostie: NOOOOOOOO!


:e2faint:
 

K1P1

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...embarrassed by corny dialogue, clunky scenes and other such things that made you shiver and look over your shoulder, thankful that no one else was reading it too?

Constantly. That's the reason why my non-fiction work is published, but no one--NO ONE!--will ever see any of my partially finished novels.
 

tehuti88

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It usually takes me a few years, at least, to be embarrassed by my writing. By then my style has changed so much that I can easily be horrified by what was the best I could make it when I originally wrote it. I can't think of a time when I looked at something I wrote recently and thought it was awful, since I put a lot of work into writing well.

Other than that, yes, I do get mortified looking at older stuff. I attach disclaimers to my older work which is available for reading online but I haven't the time to redo yet, to let readers know that I don't write THAT horribly anymore! :eek:
 

Claudia Gray

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Yeah, sometimes. I wouldn't call it embarrassment as much as wondering, "Where did this come from? What was I thinking?"
 

payitforward

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Given how I've misspelled and completely misused quite a few of my words over the last few days, I'm feeling not only embarrassed, but just downright stupid!

I'm hoping it's just the cold I have right now. Still I just wrote a status update on facebook saying, "My coughs are wretching out my back."

Wretching out my back? What the heck? Someone, take me away from the keyboard....
 

aka eraser

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I've been embarrassed by re-reading something I'd written decades before (and thought at the time was golden).

Conversely, I've also been pleased to find the occasional 30-year-old bit of something or other that has held up over the years.

But something I'd written recently? Nope. If what I'm thinking is crappy, I don't bother writing it. I wait until a thought or two with some potential happens along. ;)
 
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