I have developed wisdom: I recognize my shoddy workmanship.

[S'mon]

My setting material stuff from when I was 12 (1985)... is not good. The stuff from ca 16+ (1989) is still pretty good, though. Even some of the 13+ is good.

 

[TerraDave]

Dealing with criticism--both self and from others--and editing (read re-writting) are essential to go from being an amatuer to a pro whenever the writting word is involved.

My experience is of the very dry non-fiction sort (reports, academic stuff), and if you can't take criticism, and rework what you have done, you might as well stop wasting your time...I can only imagine that in the case of fiction writting (that is actually published) it is only more so, or at least should be.

Then there is game design. You can find good writting in games: flavourfull text that bring the game alive and conscise descriptions that make mechanics clear. And then there is the other. But I honestly believe that with all the competition out there, people are not going to spend a lot of time on products that are poorly written (though I guess there are exceptions)

 

[takyris]

I've got published stuff that makes me cringe now.

The good thing about doing the cringing is that you know you've improved from that point. That's, well, about the only good thing about doing that cringing.

 

[Captain Tagon]

I look back at stuff I wrote a few months ago and cringe. Especially poetry. But at least with poetry I can pick out the really cool lines from like eight poems and then make a new one. But for fiction my dialogue is horrible.

 

[The_Gneech]

Nobody expects George Lucas!

His main weapon is surprise, surprise and fear. Er, his TWO main weapons are fear, surprise, and the ability to re-write history as it pleases him. Er. AMONGST his weaponry are fear, suprise -- I'll come in again.

-The Gneech

 

[James Heard]

I've found that I'm a hundred times the writer at 30+ that I was at 18, but my inspirational lightning strikes a lot less. Now I'm just going for a little more endurance so I can still hold onto those dreams of fat Stephen King paychecks maybe in my winter years.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Congratulations!! It's very important to be viciously discriminate of your own work. But, don't let it blind you and don't let it stop you from writing. Continue to plow ahead with your writing--just edit with a more advanced understanding. Don't let yourself becomed trapped, like so many English professors, in that world of fear that prevents you from stepping up and baring your work to the public.

Knowledge of your own work compared to the immensity of literature can be crippling--don't let it be. Just realize that the brash young arroganace, that is almost nurtured in school, really represents a kind of defense mechanism to help promote your own work. A writer must embrace these two disparate concerns. Good luck. I look forward to possibly reading one of your novels in the future--if you are any good.

edit: smiley

 

[jmucchiello]

Creativity during my ill-spent teens and twenties was writing songs for a band. Bad lyrics that make me cringe would usually be whatever I had written 6 months earlier. Or worse, having fallen in love with a cool turn of phrase that is just marbles in your mouth sung out loud. (My co-lyricist had a real problem with doing this.)

In any case, learning to make singable lyrics and not giving up on fixing them until I could feel comfortable singing it again six months later highly improved my ability to edit myself. I'm not perfect, but my current editor usually finds only the occasional typo and a few dropped articles/prepositions. (I just know I'm going to make an error in this post....)

Hell, I think I constantly find problems with my work. Probably half of the time I spend on any project is reworking the material -- the challenge is knowing when to quit rewriting and start publishing. A very real danger of constantly rewriting exists and if I wasn't under time pressure I'd probably never finish a project.

This should be a bolt from the blue for someone like me, but, I'm too grounded to get the hint.

 

[philreed]

This should be a bolt from the blue for someone like me, but, I'm too grounded to get the hint.

Yeah! You need to watch that.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Ch-ch-ch-changes ...

Hell, I think I constantly find problems with my work. Probably half of the time I spend on any project is reworking the material -- the challenge is knowing when to quit rewriting and start publishing. A very real danger of constantly rewriting exists and if I wasn't under time pressure I'd probably never finish a project.

Yeah, the challenge is getting the book out. No matter what you do, no matter how many editors, etc. there will be mistakes in the final book and/or things you wish you could changes. My biggest goal is to recognize the mistakes I have made in the past and work to correct those in the future. This means I get to make entirely new mistakes in the next book.

Right now, I find editing something written by more than one or two authors particularly difficult. A writer has certain standard mistakes or habits that get easier to recognize as you read their work. 10 different writers are going to have 10 different habits that get much more difficult to recognize as you go through a book.

Patrick