I have developed wisdom: I recognize my shoddy workmanship.

[RangerWickett]

When I was just starting college, I thought I was a great author. I wrote cheesy dialogue and melodramatic high fantasy, and thought I was following in the fine footsteps of such acclaimed authors as R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman. Because, you know, those are the only real authors out there.

Lately I've been slowing down as to how fast I write, and I think in part it might be because I'm recognizing my own flaws a lot more easily. I mean, sure, anyone can look back at something they did 4 years ago and see how you've improved (snark:

Spoiler

except perhaps George Lucas

), but this week I've been doing some writing, and I'm looking at it and recognizing its flaws. I know it's still better than stuff I did last year, and it's good enough that people will read it, but it's not great.

This was brought home today when I looked at my playtest notes for the latest ruleset I was working on. I'd made an obvious mistake with a magic system, basically letting characters cast an unlimited number of spells -- sure, they're only 1st or 2nd level spells, but infinite cure spells and charm spells can be abusive.

Similarly, I wrote out the first post of my new storyhour, and I realize that, though it made for a good first scene in an adventure, it's too slow for the serialized nature of storyhours.

I feel pretty good about realizing this, since it means that I'm more aware of my work. The problem is that I don't know how to fix it. Maybe I just have some bad ideas and I should focus my efforts elsewhere.

I just thought I'd share. *grin*

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Heh, I know the feeling. I can no longer look at stuff I wrote 10 years ago, myself. Still, for every wince, there's at least one moment of "hey, I forgot that bit. That's pretty good."

And even just recognizing bad work is enough. Keep at it until you don't want to scream when you read it.

 

[D-rock]

Well, I heve always known that my writing stank, so I almost envy you. When your work is read only by yourself there will almost always be errors. People have the hardest time seeing their own mistakes. I sometimes will write something and go back through it several times and find nothing wrong with it. Then, I let somebody else look through it and they find stuff right away. The first thing I wonder about when they tell me is "how did I miss that". I guess when we live with our own brain for so long we get a little too used to what it tells us.


About George, well maybe he figures once you hit rock bottom you have no where else to go but up.

 

[Aeric]

(snark: expect perhaps George Lucas)

Nobody expects George Lucas!

 

[Beale Knight]

I can relate to this. I've had cause to re-read the setting I wrote awhile back and have noticed some embarressing errors to go with some writing that's just out and out bland. I haven't been able to find the fiction I penned years back, and fear that's a good thing.

I feel pretty good about realizing this, since it means that I'm more aware of my work. The problem is that I don't know how to fix it. Maybe I just have some bad ideas and I should focus my efforts elsewhere.*

Recently I've been working with an editor and that has made a world of difference. Having a pair of experienced eyes look at your work is good. When they come with fingers that'll work on the draft they're handed, that's even better. Seeing how this guy has improved my work, being able to read how much better it can be, has been very inspirering. I also think that it's helped me avoid some of the crutches and habits I'd gotten myself into without realizing. The same might help you 'fix it'.

 

[MonsterMash]

When I was just starting college, I thought I was a great author. I wrote cheesy dialogue and melodramatic high fantasy, and thought I was following in the fine footsteps of such acclaimed authors as R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman. Because, you know, those are the only real authors out there.

Snark: But writing like that is following Salvatore, isn't it?

Seriously though it is important to keep trying to improve and you often make big strides moving out of your teens (there is the occasional prodigy, but if they weren't rare we wouldn't pay so much attention to them).

For real embarassment I found some stuff recently I wrote from my days playing OD&D(1974) that must date from about 1980 when I was 14 - talk about mortified!

 

[philreed]

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.

 

[Wayside]

The fundamental experience of the writer is helplessness. This does not mean to distinguish writing from being alive: it means to correct the fantasy that creative work is an ongoing record of the triumph of volition, that the writer is someone who has the good luck to be able to do what he or she wishes to do: to confidently and regularly imprint his being on a sheet of paper. But writing is not decanting of personality. And most writers spend much of their time in various kinds of torment: wanting to write, being unable to write; wanting to write differently, being unable to write differently. In a whole lifetime, years are spent waiting to be claimed by an idea. The only real exercise of will is negative: we have toward what we write the power of veto.

Not that spending a dozen hours on one sentence or one line (which still isn't even a quarter as good as some other sentence or line that flashed randomly across your brain like a kind of creative electrical surge) isn't terribly fun.

 

[Psion]

Let's hope others can learn your wisdom.

Some writers (both in general and game writers) never accept that they are human enough to make a mistake.

 

[Henry]

I have not written a lot of fiction in my life, but one thing that I recognize as a truism is to read as many sources as you can, especially outside of the genre; there's a huge wide world out there besides Tolkien, Weis, Salvatore, and Asprin () and you can learn a lot of technique by observing everything from horror to romance to history to non-fiction, to even news and professional journals!