• Read this: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?288931-Guidelines-for-Participation-in-Outwitting-Writer-s-Block

    before you post.

I hate everything I write

celticroots

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 9, 2008
Messages
854
Reaction score
40
Location
United States
I've started writing again after taking a long time off due to illness. At the moment, I hate everything I write-the prose more so than the story. I think, "God, this is horrible! Why are you doing this? Not like you'll get published. Just give up."

Should I continue writing anyway? That's what I plan on doing.
 
Last edited:

MaeZe

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 6, 2016
Messages
12,748
Reaction score
6,435
Location
Ralph's side of the island.
I'm going to vote yes, by all means continue.

I'm at the end of my book and I'm still writing dorky stuff until I edit it. And then it comes out pretty good.

My brain lays the story down like a klutz. But my critique skills aren't half bad. I just have to look at the dorky sentences, cut out most of it, (the reader doesn't need that, it's obvious), polish a bit more, then edit some more when I come back to it. And when I'm done with a lot of editing, I think it might just be publishable.
 

Cindyt

Gettin wiggy wit it
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 14, 2016
Messages
4,826
Reaction score
1,954
Location
The Sticks
Website
growingupwolf.blogspot.com
My first five drafts were horrible--shudder. Even today there are one or two chapters which I hate even though they polished out just fine. My advice is to keep on writing.
 

BradCarsten

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 23, 2010
Messages
1,179
Reaction score
96
Location
Johannesburg South Africa
That's perfectly natural. I feel that way all the time and it could take 20 edits, and days to get it right, but something eventually clicks and it slots into place.
 

talktidy

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 14, 2014
Messages
896
Reaction score
86
Location
Fabulous Sweyn's Eye
It's the rare individual who creates excellent writing in the first draft.

Whether you continue or abandon, is up to you.

A first draft, in which one despairs at the quality of the prose sounds about right to me, though. Remember, bad writing, unlike no writing, can be fixed. IMO it is better to concentrate upon getting your story down on paper first, though I would work towards a satisfying ending.

Subsequent drafts can clean up bad prose and excise narrative threads that go nowhere.
 

Aggy B.

Not as sweet as you think
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 28, 2008
Messages
11,882
Reaction score
1,557
Location
Just north of the Deep South
My dislike of what I write tends to go every other time. (I write something and I hate it. But the next time I read it, maybe it doesn't seem so terrible. Or, I write something and I like it, but when I review it... "What the hell was I thinking with this shit?" And it continues to swap back and forth every time I look at it.)

The thing is, bad writing (if it is bad writing) can be fixed. A blank page or no words at all cannot.

Things that help me, personally: focusing on overall goals of page and wordcounts, reminding myself that I can delete or rewrite anything that is actually terrible, that all writing is practice and helps me grow even if this particular thing may be mostly what not to do in the future.

Also, taking frequent breaks, physical activity - mild, remembering to eat and drink on a regular basis, everyone has this kind of struggle even if they don't admit it.
 

starrystorm

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 9, 2018
Messages
2,987
Reaction score
605
Age
24
I'm on my second draft now and am struggling on this one paragraph because I think it's horrible no matter how I write it, and I keep telling myself that this isn't the first draft, it has to be perfect. Wrong! I realize there is a third draft yet to come that I won't like, thanks to Cindyt. But I'll keep writing and I can go back to it as many times as I like.
 

bahamaswriter

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
140
Reaction score
31
Location
Nassau, Bahamas
Website
fayknowles.blogspot.com
I've started writing again after taking a long time off due to illness. At the moment, I hate everything I write-the prose more so than the story. I think, "God, this is horrible! Why are you doing this? Not like you'll get published. Just give up."

Should I continue writing anyway? That's what I plan on doing.

It will take time to get back into the writing mode after a long absence, but stick at it and you will eventually find it flows again. Good luck!
 
Last edited:

OldHat63

Banned
Flounced
Joined
Aug 21, 2018
Messages
404
Reaction score
30
Location
Lost in the woods of TN and prefer it that way
A blank page or no words at all cannot ( be fixed). .


I dunno about the "no words" thing... I haven't been writing for very long at all, but I've been fixing blank pages most of my life.
Like this one, for instance:

hJP3hgc4lT4JXymaB071l6SNUpcVXgxcmlpAOlg6JwkUGvPtJi8EqfWrWHhjHICa41dwWcFAUxT0B8wyjMZzSiT41x2Ka4xzW0rk108hyBiIoQdaiVp99ZuAUcUC0ngiHsSwOohtc42evplo_vfipO0pv7J1Itw_e1ZsivYjV6r8amkOBw3D3ric0gV57zFCrmfZJk49bsHbCD21LCjym-JTU2M6GYRI8tjEDuxOM-_LKhKIczZuc7AQXz_QxaKR5d-DIALyywM7HSyEhaPaHm0qzWQtdMHO9FEaZtGJUY1eVMtI9VXl05a5QqwC30LPjqFyXdYKaymoQBJYF6wgVQPMLmomsqhSL_qwO05E5IBC1chjQJNogaiKkhzUL6455rfmUkXTXakkHHWXEp_o50mfmlQ_7pu51AYOkqh2Up9IwjOzHkGv9BcXVkHKMGFUSZL-_YcaqOKFeR_syq10k4QBTsJXDwmmYS9p7WhFrVbAUcPn6DK7YpILaSB8HN-A7Q8dc_OkJjgdG1nJBSydKwS5vR4oJQLemTumpufwMF0vdW4Jo6IZ-1zGM2VB7wmfrMS6t5xGtPCUzf56WP9xcDUZZbckH1NwacYyeqwSxzjOxYMIPau0CBiWZRVh0Q=w413-h300-no


Fixed it pretty well, don't ya think? ;)

( Yeah, it's a bad joke. Sorry. Was tinkering with posting pictures. )
 
Last edited:

SarahJane

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 23, 2012
Messages
112
Reaction score
9
Location
Ontario, Canada
Keep going! You'll regret it if you give up.

Imposter syndrome is real and it affects more writers (and more people in general) than you might imagine. Just because you hate what you've written one day does not necessarily mean you'll always hate it. Take a break from that project and work on something else until you can come back to it with more objectivity.

And honestly, writers who bang out a first draft, reread it, and think it's perfection are just fooling themselves. Kind of like the tone-deal warblers who audition for American Idol and are surprised when they get turned away.
 

M.S. Wiggins

"The Moving Finger writes..."
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 27, 2014
Messages
3,266
Reaction score
680
Location
Charleston
I think we all keep a drawer of white flags we’ll wave on occasion. Just don’t forget to burn it—and burn it with words.
 

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,612
Reaction score
14,744
Location
Massachusetts
At the moment, I hate everything I write-the prose more so than the story. I think, "God, this is horrible! Why are you doing this? Not like you'll get published. Just give up."

Sympathies! I have citizenship in that land myself. Sometimes I summer there.

I doubt the illness has changed how you write. How did you feel about your writing before that? Is this new, the hating-everything-I-write?
 

DanielSTJ

The Wandering Bard
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 3, 2017
Messages
5,410
Reaction score
368
Age
34
Location
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
My first five drafts were horrible--shudder. Even today there are one or two chapters which I hate even though they polished out just fine. My advice is to keep on writing.

I agree. The subsequent revisions and editing are what make or break a story.

Keep going! You've got this.
 

Erinell

Registered
Joined
Aug 22, 2018
Messages
44
Reaction score
6
Location
Where ideas and imagination gather
Absolutely keep writing, and be patient with yourself. :) What caught my eye is your concern about the prose more than the story -- in other words, you've got words on paper, the critical first step to making it sing. And absolutely, you should continue writing. I'm a notorious perfectionist when it comes to my own work, but what's saved me more than once is the famous Pixar rules for story ... #11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone. Best wishes!
 

celticroots

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 9, 2008
Messages
854
Reaction score
40
Location
United States
Thank you guys for all your kind comments. They've helped me a lot. I wrote a little bit today and it started to feel like it's coming easier. I still have twinges of doubt but they don't feel as bad anymore.
 

celticroots

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 9, 2008
Messages
854
Reaction score
40
Location
United States
Sympathies! I have citizenship in that land myself. Sometimes I summer there.

I doubt the illness has changed how you write. How did you feel about your writing before that? Is this new, the hating-everything-I-write?

I was hospitalized in May and spent a chunk of June off my feet. July was a stressful busy month. I started back at my day program for people with disabilities earlier this month and at the end of the day after program I am exhausted. I think these defeating thoughts came on the heels of that.

With thinking that my writing is awful also comes the fact that I'll be 30 next year and still haven't gotten a novel published. Having a novel published by 30 was a goal. Having not met it makes me feel like a failure.
 

Erinell

Registered
Joined
Aug 22, 2018
Messages
44
Reaction score
6
Location
Where ideas and imagination gather
I was hospitalized in May and spent a chunk of June off my feet. July was a stressful busy month. I started back at my day program for people with disabilities earlier this month and at the end of the day after program I am exhausted. I think these defeating thoughts came on the heels of that.

With thinking that my writing is awful also comes the fact that I'll be 30 next year and still haven't gotten a novel published. Having a novel published by 30 was a goal. Having not met it makes me feel like a failure.

Ah, that brings it into focus for me, anyway. The stress of recovery and a looming goal make it so difficult! Perhaps with your writing, you can pare it down to a daily goal that, with some effort, you can achieve? A scene, a paragraph, even a sentence? I try to keep my goals very modest to allow me to snuggle up to a feeling of success often... makes the longer haul (the dream of hardcover in a very very challenging market) easier to manage. Best wishes for smoother sailing ahead!
 

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,612
Reaction score
14,744
Location
Massachusetts
I was hospitalized in May and spent a chunk of June off my feet. July was a stressful busy month. I started back at my day program for people with disabilities earlier this month and at the end of the day after program I am exhausted. I think these defeating thoughts came on the heels of that.

With thinking that my writing is awful also comes the fact that I'll be 30 next year and still haven't gotten a novel published. Having a novel published by 30 was a goal. Having not met it makes me feel like a failure.

Ah, okay. I was wondering if perhaps there was a medical reason (depression) for this. (Perhaps there is? But sounds like not?)

I can't tell you that it's silly to worry about reaching 30 with that goal unreached.

But I can say that being 57 and not being published does grant me a slightly different perspective about reaching 30 with the same conditions. :roll:

I'd suggest writing something frivolous & fun, if you can. Perhaps writing something you know is disposable, not on the Grand Path To This Great Uber Life-Goal, would ease you away from feeling this way?
 

Filigree

Mildly Disturbing
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 16, 2010
Messages
16,441
Reaction score
1,529
Location
between rising apes and falling angels
Website
www.cranehanabooks.com
Celticroots, hang in there! Illness and injury are incredible stressful under normal situations. Give yourself time and room.

You're not on anyone else's timetable, just yours.

I'm nearly 53. I started writing for fun in 1983 at age 17, and writing-with-intent-to-publish in 1987. I was awful. Also easily distracted, as I was developing an art & manufacturing career at the same time. I got my first short story published in 2000, my first novel in 2012. I've been represented by two great literary agents, who loved one of my genres but not the others. I've seen incredible positive and negative changes in publishing. The book in my sig started as a short story in the late 90s, and was trunked for years before I decided to expand it.

I hate every project at some point in the process. I've learned to analyze *why* I hate it so I can fix it, and to push through my first-draft doubts. As Aggy says, we can't fix a blank page.
 

OldHat63

Banned
Flounced
Joined
Aug 21, 2018
Messages
404
Reaction score
30
Location
Lost in the woods of TN and prefer it that way
Ah, okay. I was wondering if perhaps there was a medical reason (depression) for this. (Perhaps there is? But sounds like not?)

Actually, you're dead right... Because I can tell you for a fact NOTHING is more depressing than being sick, in pain, or having some problem/situation that there's no cure for except time.

Granted, the depression is of the temporary sort, but it can still be more devastating than whatever the physical problem is that started it in the first place.
 

Cascada

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2017
Messages
199
Reaction score
24
Location
UK
Thank you guys for all your kind comments. They've helped me a lot. I wrote a little bit today and it started to feel like it's coming easier. I still have twinges of doubt but they don't feel as bad anymore.

I get twinges of doubt nearly every day. I'm guess a lot of writers do. Just keep going, and maybe get some good writing buddies for feedback, if you haven't already.
 

Scythian

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 4, 2018
Messages
201
Reaction score
40
I was hospitalized in May and spent a chunk of June off my feet. July was a stressful busy month. I started back at my day program for people with disabilities earlier this month and at the end of the day after program I am exhausted. I think these defeating thoughts came on the heels of that.

With thinking that my writing is awful also comes the fact that I'll be 30 next year and still haven't gotten a novel published. Having a novel published by 30 was a goal. Having not met it makes me feel like a failure.

I’ve gradually shifted to the “system approach” from the “goal approach”, after also spending a lot of time vowing to do this before 20, that before 35, and so on.

With the goal approach people throw everything into achieving the goal, but the rest of life is on autopilot, and tends to sabotage one, as entropy begins to accumulate all across the system of one’s life. What you achieve, you achive in spite of the state of your life (and the compensatory tendency to use 'fake boosts' like drugs and alcohol in order to claw at the goal while everything else is in shoddy condition, or even in a state of collapse). With the systemic approach, one makes a plan to gradually raise the quality of every aspect of life, including, in our cases, writing. What you achieve, you achieve as a result of the state of your life. Without the crazy need for lots of legal or illegal stimulants, and therefore paying such a hefty price when the collector comes a knocking.

When life’s different aspects are gradually coming under control (within reason, per the realistic boundaries of the situation one is in), the overall level gets raised automatically, and after a certain point success rears its sexy head from every side (especially when one has taken off the 'freaking out goggles' and the various 'successes' become visible, as opposed to being blotted out by relentless grandiose fantasizing). Adding a 3% life bonus here, a 2% life bonus there, all across the board, can suddenly combine into very serious positive changes beyond the sum of their parts.

Figuring out how to eat best along the budget-health spectrum (often a can of tuna and a simple soup or basic pasta is way better than fried crap and chips and the like), how to sleep best as in when and how long, how balance the various responsibilities and desires, including keeping one’s immediate habitat tidy and non-toxic, helps stopping freaking out.

(Feng Shui may sound like superstition at first glance, and maybe much of it is, but to me it makes perfect sense that our immediate environment has a mirror duplicate in the subconscious layers of the mind--per Melanie Klein's vintage theories, for example--and when you take care of the external half, the internal half also stops being a swamp of entropy)

Freaking out burns too much energy which is much better directed into maintaining health, happiness, and work.

And lastly, concerning depression and anxiety, a lot of it is related to the body’s chemistry (as opposed to only the brain's chemistry, which still tends to be viewed in isolation, and not an intergral part of a larger system), which in turn is related to the body’s chemistry-regulating organs, including very much the adrenal glands. Giving them a break for a week or two, with no or little caffeine, sugar, greasy foods, exciting films or music, etc., may very well allow them to bounce back from the constant overstrain we tend to put them through, and once they bounce back, after a transitional period of brain fog and fatigue, the moods and energy levels stop the ‘sharp high’-‘sharp crash’ nonsense and settle on a more sustainable, reasonable level.

Once the adrenal glands and the endocrine system have recovered some semblance of balance, much of the daily stress starts feeling like a mosquito bite as opposed to a shark bite. Which, IMO, is the way it's supposed to be. When the fight or flight reflex is back in decent working condition, instead of giving false positives all over the place.

Good luck with everything.

**

How not taking care of the stomach can bite one in the ass brain and promote depression:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-bacteria-may-exacerbate-depress/
https://kellybroganmd.com/from-gut-to-brain-the-inflammation-connection/
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/healthy_aging/healthy_body/the-brain-gut-connection

How maxing out on the "nervous energy" of the adrenal glands can bite one in all the asses imaginable:
https://adrenalfatiguesolution.com/adrenal-fatigue-symptoms/
https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/fitn...e/news-story/89f84dfd83b3a552e52cd8b26e3f0915
https://empoweredsustenance.com/adrenal-fatigue-recovery/
 
Last edited: