McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Is It just Me Or Does Everything I Write Seem To Suck?!

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redneckwitch18:
I got into writing fiction novels in high school. I do pretty well, but I hit major blocks constantly, have trouble with getting the info I don't know, and think everything that I write sucks more than I brand new Hoover vaccum. Instead, I spend my time reading someone else's published novel, which (although it's good) makes me a very depressed person. Am I the only one????

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: redneckwitch18 on May 25, 2007, 05:55:12 PM ---I got into writing fiction novels in high school. I do pretty well, but I hit major blocks constantly, have trouble with getting the info I don't know, and think everything that I write sucks more than I brand new Hoover vaccum. Instead, I spend my time reading someone else's published novel, which (although it's good) makes me a very depressed person. Am I the only one????

--- End quote ---

I've met a reasonable number of really good published writers, and they all without exception go through patches of thinking their stuff isn't working.  It also seems that having a bulletproof ego about your work correlates very well with writing complete twaddle.  So thinking it sucks is probably a good sign.

A writing group, or test-readers in general, who are about at your level or slightly better in terms of how much they have written and what they read, is the best way to get a solid handle on this.  People who understand the mechanics of writing enough to say useful things going beyond "this sucks" or "this rocks" to "this does not quite work because of X, and have you considered doing Y with it"; people a lot worse than you won't be able to do that meaningfully because they won't get what you are doing, and people a lot better than you may not offer advice that you can usefully implement [ not to mention that I always get very guilty at the thought of someone a lot better than me spending time reading my work that they could be using on things of their own that would benefit the world much more. ]

redneckwitch18:

--- Quote from: neurovore on May 25, 2007, 06:03:26 PM ---A writing group, or test-readers in general, who are about at your level or slightly better in terms of how much they have written and what they read, is the best way to get a solid handle on this.

--- End quote ---

How would I find out about any of these test readers?

Murphy's Stunt Double:
I found a group of writers at Meetup.com. I love my writers group,because they give me feedback just like Neurovore was saying... beyond the this rocks, this sucks level. We have a newspaper copy editor, a horror magazine editor, a retired writing professor who has published in the non-fiction field more than once, a really promising novelist, and a talented short-horror writer, a poet, a stand up comic, some guy who writes his rants about society down in the voices of other characters, and me, who is writing a non-fiction horror memoir.  ;)

Start there. Having an educated point of view giving me feedback has made all the difference in the world for me. Good luck!

redneckwitch18:
Thanks. Will do. I just get so frustrated w/ myself for not doing better. Kills the self-confidence, ya know?!

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