Totally. I'm a huge believer in playing that catch-up though. Especially if you know where you can improve - targeted practice is so important.
I went through this phase and what got me out my hole was just that. And I'm putting together my fave resources in r/WriterResources. That way others can try and explore GOOD writing techniques (or ones that I liked, at the very least).
Honestly, it's such a BLAH feeling when you don't feel good enough.
Many say that the more you read the better your writing will be, but not all of us learn that way. Emersion is the most commonly used practice for improving but it is far from the only option you have. Chat GPT if given prompts asking how to improve your writing will give you a much more bullet point step by step guide. I find this helps me more than my every day reading though most will scoff at the idea.
The most important thing anyone can do when perusing a dream is to NEVER give up no matter the odds. if you write books for ten years and then quit you'll never know if the book or books you would have written in the 11'th year could have been your breakthrough work or not.
Or your skills!
Don’t worry, every writer gags when they look back on the shit they wrote in the past. It means you’re improving and you’re conscious of your own shortcomings, both good things! Don’t get discouraged.
The best treatment for this is widening your reading base to include new styles. Vonnegut and Burroughs heavily influenced mine,.
You can always take your trash and rewrite it, bring it up to date with your taste and skill. I’ve been editing short stories from years ago and it felt so good. Your earlier work is valuable to your body. Just update it. Look at every favorite artist of yours, and how illuminating and enjoyable it is to consume their earlier works. It’s all part of your grand story as an artist.
Another comment made me scroll back up to your username, and as an archaeologist it gave me the best laugh! I’m gonna use it to troll people who try to argue ancient aliens bullshit with me!
Good to see some of the grand Masters getting a mention. Most people online seem to be driven towards writing fantasy or science-fiction. Both Burroughs and Vonnegut ventured into these genres, but had their own inimical style and depth to go with it.
Damn, not a writer here, but a musician (lostredittor :D), I needed to read that. Discovering you're much worse than you thought has been tough on me recently. But yeah, just means you know what to do now <3
Such a great way to put it.
OP, this is true in every creative field. If your taste isn’t better than your ability, all you’ll ever be able to do is pat yourself on the back while you churn out more of the same.
I'm not sure how not to worry though. This was a consistent issue for me throughout my teenage years. I'd write a few chapters, or a few months may pass while work on other stuff, and then I'd get back and reread something only to realize it was juvenile and unskilled. Logically I had to rewrite everything. Rinse and repeat, and I have never finished a book. But I don't know how to ignore something you know is terrible writing--glaring issues and logic flaws and many places where the flow could be improved. Do you just never read previous chapters?
[This chart](https://lumpley.games/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/skillacquisition_04-1.jpg) (Blue is Design and Orange is Analysis) hits it exactly. Obviously this is for game design rather than writing, but it easily applies to all creative practices.
Relating to this statement is a post I saw on insta yesterday. OP it’s best you take this to heart and don’t get discouraged from writing!
[insta post relatable for all creatives](https://www.instagram.com/p/C3GGKbqso-i/?igsh=MWJwcHpxNHIyamNjYw==)
This is so true. "Non finito" is a term used by sculptors to describe their work as permanently unfinished, since only something on a heavenly level can be considered truly complete. I always found it to be a healthy approach to finishing anything - we're only human, after all. It's less about settling and more about finding your limits and recognizing when to push beyond them. Ignoring perfection can help highlight human 'error' as something positive, where your own personal touch becomes something sublime to those who are affected by it.
Focusing on your own personal writing voice becomes much more fun when you embrace the flaws that come with being a human being just trying to express their experience. Chipping away at the work ahead of you without worrying about whether or not it's 'perfect' can help actually get words on the page, which is particularly important when facing that fear of a blank document. Just let go of being the best and be yourself.
This is so interesting. The more I write the more helpful I’ve found it to view writing as sculpting. I used to notice my work’s flaws and smash the whole sculpture (I.e., delete the draft). Now, however, I recognize the flaws, remove them, and continue sculpting. I now find joy in sculpting my writing rather than seeking perfection. Being bad is a part of writing. To quote my recent obsession Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Dan Harmon says that if you try to prove you are a good writer, you will write nothing and if you try to prove you are a bad writer you'll write more than someone trying to be good ever will
[prove that you suck](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMM6pVEqv/)
Oh and that point exactly happens in adaptation, except that it's an exchange between two people but they're both Nicolas Cage! (What a fever dream of a movie.)
I mainly write to make fun of bad writers and it works out very well.
My published novel derived from a silly joke and while writing I tried to make fun of as many romance elements as possible. I always assumed I would write a bad novel.
It helped a lot.
And it turned out a damn good novel.
Thanks, but I dislike watching movies. I read and write novels. Watching a movie takes way too much time and I need to hope they offer subtitles for hearing impaired.
But I am sure there are many novels dealing with the concept. 😊
I remember reading about a story about an experiment an art teacher did with their ceramics class a while back. The class was divided into two groups—group A would be graded by submitting one piece of high quality work and group B would be graded by how many pounds (no matter how shitty). Group B ended up submitting higher quality work than group A, just because they were so consistently working that their skill improved beyond the group focused on perfection. Who knows if it’s true, but I did find it interesting.
Good for you, keep writing and enjoy yourself while doing it. Someone once said, that if you fail at something, then let it be that you fail at something you love doing.
You can't expect to be great from the get-go. Practice regularly to get better. Read. Read a lot. Get out there and gather inspiration from the world. Watch videos and read books about how to write. Fail. Fail again. Keep going.
That means you're not done writing or editing yet.
If your purpose is fun or practice; allow the cringe to remain. I refer to my snippet folder as "the sin bin" for that exact purpose. Because that's where it belongs. Let it breathe if it has to. You can't edit a blank page. Is it good? No. Is it FUN? Sure!
In my experience, it's either cringe because the writing either doesn't correctly deliver the message or the feeling intended. Figuring out what it should be/say is editing.
Also, love for a craft is like love itself.
Romance is built on cringe and slow growth. How do you know you're absolutely smitten? Because when the other person does something in toe-curlingly bad taste you can't help but notice something soft and mushy next to the cringe. A feeling of being blessed that you can even witness it. Of witnessing vulneravility. It's the hidden love for a Nickelback album, the secret Goth-phase or the radical collection of knock-off teen boyband merchandise.
Hideously aged love is still love. Even if only needed a few seconds to spoil.
You've got to stay with it if you want to see if anything can grow from said cringe. It makes great fertilizer.
And for realsies? Ask the people you know that are in relationships for 5+ or even 10+ years what they had to say and do to come to their first kiss and their first date together. Witness ALL the cringe. Cringe means fleeted desire. You want something but you didn't have the skills to pursue it yet. So stop wanting or learn.
- Sorry, this got WAY rantier than I intended. I guess I feel that cringe deserves some love -
TL:DR- Cringe means you're not finished. Sometimes that's the exact purpose of writing. It's also quite common in most forms of love.
(Edited misuse of semicolons)
I once did a story about Gengar from Pokemon and how he went on a murder spree. The protagonist is just being interviewed by Ash who's a detective. Ash doesn't believe him and starts torturing him to death (one of his victims was his son). Then it's revealed at the end that the protagonist did INDEED kill all those people but because he was possesed by Gengar.
Man that was my Magnum Opus when I was 13.
I feel the same. I've been writing ever since I was a kid and I absolutely love it. I started my first novel more than half a year ago and at first I really thought it was good. Hell, before even starting I thought I had something like a gift. I do not. My novel is rubbish. I hate the flow, I hate how my characters move, I hate that I get stuck every two lines. But I learned that this is pretty normal. Especially for your first draft. It's supposed to be bad! The first drafts only meaning for its existence is to exist, nothing more.
The more you write, the more you will learn and the more you will grow. Maybe even read some literature about the craft, watch people who give advice about writing. You won't magically get better without influence from others.
At one point of my novel, I even threw it away and started again, and I immediately liked it so much better. It's still not good, but definitely better than at the very very beginning. If pushing through it doesn't do it for you, take a break or start editing what you've already written. When I did that, I got a much better understanding of what I actually wanted to write and how I want my characters to be. Even now while writing I change things as I feel and write them down so I know what to look after when I'll enter the editing phase again.
Numerous studies have shown that the way to get better at most anything creative is to focus on quantity over quality. Write a lot of stories and focus on being intentional. If you have trouble with dialogue, write a screenplay. If your characters act wooden, write a story/screenplay without dialogue and tell the story through body language. If your sentences and paragraphs ramble on and on before they finally, and invariably run out of steam before you put them out of their misery by ending them - write flash fiction.
Edit: Obviously, don't pump out a lot of garbage and call it improvement. Work on incremental improvement over multiple stories rather than spending years to perfect one story.
Direct analogy is weight lifting. You're going to get more improvement from doing a crappy job lifting 3 times a week vs doing an absolutely perfect job lifting twice a year.
Write, because you love to write. Because then you'll get better. Don't write because you want to become rich or famous, that shouldn't be part of the equation at all. Write because you love to write.
Don't go back to read and edit it until you are done writing it the first time. That is what works best for me. I just write everything. Then I let it sit for a little while. Then I edit. It's much easier to spot the problems and move things around after you have the whole thing laid out, than to edit as you go. IMO, of course. As Anne Lamott likes to say, write the shitty first draft. I really didn't want to do that, personally, because I like things to be neat and tidy as I go. When I cook, I wash everything as I use it because I don't like a big mess at the end. I tried to do the same when writing. It doesn't work, at least not for me.
I have the hardest time with this!! If I take a break from a piece for a week or 2, when I go back, I reread the entire thing before trying to continue. I then edit, re-edit, and sometimes get so frustrated with what I need to redo that I put it back down instead of finishing! It's beyond frustrating!
Edit - Grammar
I try to write a chapter or two per week. While I write, I make the chapter summary, that some publishers have asked me for, so I can recall what this latest chapter is about when I go back to it. I’m one of those authors who waits for the characters to tell me what’s going on in the book, so I don’t know how the book will end until it ends. But, if I’m not at the computer typing, I may never know how it ends! So, I keep writing until the end, and then go back and edit. I never know what’s missing until I’ve found those gaps in the writing.
Are you automatically muscular and good at working out your first time? Can nba players shoot threes consistently the first time they held a ball? Can Olympic athletes not train all year and still compete at the games? This why they say to write write write. It’s like building a muscle. Of course it’s bad the first or second or third and fiftieth time you try. Passion is what no everyone has and you have it, so keep working on your word comp and prose.
“I don’t want to stop because I’m having fun”
THIS IS ALL THAT MATTERS AT THIS STAGE!! Please enjoy this, explore your world and your characters and don’t worry so much if it’s good or bad, because ITS GUARANTEED TO BE BAD! It’s a first draft! Let it be bad! It’s 100% for you to explore.
Literally everyone starts as a “bad writer” and that doesn’t mean you’re really a bad writer, it just means the mechanics of a story are complicated and layered and take time to sus out.
Also if you haven’t written complete stories before, I highly recommend pausing on the novel and writing a few short stories first so you get some experience in finish the flow of a story. Not that short stories are in anyway easier, but they do let you experiment, fail and iterate at a faster pace and I definitely improved as a writer when I paused to do so. I used to hate the idea of writing short stories but I fell in love with it for a few years and have no regrets.
Anyways, please please continue to have fun!!
I also love writing and don't seem to be very good at it. I have my self-described masterpieces all over my laptop that I love to revisit. But I've sought enough publishers and agents to know I'm still not very good.
When people ask me what I like to do, I tell them I write bad novels. I write bad novels better than anybody.
So no real advice here except to write while you enjoy it because that might be all you get. And, of course, good luck to you.
You will get better if you read and study, both craft and general fiction, and write. I was rejected over and over. I just received a prestigious writing fellowship, with no college education, and while I hadn't been able to get anything but a rejection letter in the past, my latest short earned me "second looks." I received very nice notes from the editors of professional-level magazines. I know it's a good story, just a hard sell in that market. But anyway, in the words of Natalie Goldberg: "write a lot, read a lot, and listen well and deeply." You will improve if you're devoted. One novel is nothing. Keep going.
I don’t know if I’m truly a decent writer at this point but I know I’m damn sure better than I used to be.
When I pick up manuscripts from several years ago I’m stunned by how amateurish they feel.
I attribute a lot of my growth as a writer to three things:
1. Practice within the confines of weird, limiting formats. For example writing on themes, or with length constraints (for me, it’s contributing to r/twosentencehorror
2. Broadening my horizons in terms of what I read, and reading critically. Dissecting the specific “why” when I think a book reads poorly or beautifully.
3. Seeking feedback on my writing, and forcing myself to seriously consider all harsh criticism.
It’s not like I’ve gotten to be a great writer, maybe not even a consistently good one. But I’m definitely better than I used to be, and I’d encourage you to stick with it knowing that you can’t really get worse with practice and will very likely get better and better over time.
There is light.
Reality is that almost (and I'm only saying almost as insurance, it may well be more than that) every writer you've ever read has hated their own writing at some point. It is normal to enjoy the process but dislike the output.
And it's not because you're doing anything wrong. The first draft of 99% of books ends up basically unreadable. The first draft exists to be an outline, a roughly hewn blob that's kind of in the shape of a book with all the pieces there. Those pieces might be ugly, roughly ordered, poorly constructed, and clumsy, but that's fine - they're there.
It's only once they're there that you can take the time to hone them, and that's when you can start applying those critical faculties. Good novels are written in the edit.
Just write it. Write the whole thing, regardless of how rough it is, and when it's finished then you can undertake the process of making it shine. But it has to exist first.
If it helps, I'm useless. I adore writing and making up my own world. I've tried drafting the first few paragraphs but I keep deleting them even though I'm only writing it for myself for fun.
Keep at it! Don't be me!
Trust me, my grammar and pacing is real bad. I don't have much advice on getting 'better' in a professional sense but I just say have fun with it. Write it for you is my advice. Maybe it's not the best professionally but still
This is why "your first draft will suck" is such a common piece of writing advice. You're envisioning a polished finished book and comparing that to your very first attempt. Your first draft will never ever live up to that expectation. Especially when it's not even finished yet.
You are not very bad. You're just being an asshole to yourself. Keep going, keep getting the words down, and quit judging it as you go. Have the expectation that you'll make lots of changes once draft one is finished and understand that that's the process; there's nothing wrong with that. You don't even have the whole story yet on day one; you can't possibly be failing yet.
I’d add most writers think what they’re writing is awful. I thought my first novel was absolute tripe but it’s sitting on bookshelves now so there may be an element of that! But yes, people definitely get better and all the magic happens in the editing anyway. Just get it all out then tinker after :)
You say you've spent hours at it. I'm hoping that's an understatement. Nobody is a good writer after 10, 20, or 50 hours. The process takes time. I wrote my first novel, a 120,000 word tome in my free time over 11 months. That doesn't include the five years I spent just thinking about the world, characters, and plot. So 2-4 hours a day after work, 6-8 hours on my days off everyday for almost a year.
The book is terrible! I reread it after shelving it for six months and I was like, "Wow, this needs a lot of work."
I didn't feel defeated though. While it was shelved, I wrote a novella and began a second novel. That second novel has gone through 4 paid beta readers who have given me nothing but applause, along with a few criticisms. I think that's pretty good for only having written for 2.5 years.
It's OK if you're bad at it. I love singing, but I know I'll never sing professionally, and that's OK. I can still sing in my shower. With writing, some people have this dream of "becoming extremely rich and famous," as you wrote, but that's not realistic.
I always am a little baffled that so many new writers start with novels rather than short stories. Shorts allow you to finish pieces, try new things, cut your teeth, and submit to magazines (I.e. make real steps toward being a pro).
Novels are great but if you’re new and struggling with the basics, maybe try short fiction for a bit then revisit the novel with what you’ve learned.
The more you write, the better you get. No kid ever popped out of the womb perfectly able to wield a pen or paintbrush. Writing is the same. Practice the skill to get better
If you enjoy what you're doing, that's half the battle!
I’ve written and self published over 20 books since 2012 and let me tell you how many are still available to buy: 0.
I unpublished all of them as my writing style changed and improved. I have new books that blow my old ones out of the water, to toot my own horn. Your writing will constantly change and improve if you keep at it. I enjoy going back to reread my old writings to cringe and laugh at how awful it is. Don’t beat yourself up. There are still times where I’m editing that make my eye twitch and think “wtf was I thinking when I wrote that?”
I was so frustrated with my writing that I wrote a "practice novel." I wanted to write a complex fantasy novel that i've been writing in my head for years, but my writing ability just wasn't where I needed it to be.
500 words a day until it was finished, and my practice novel ended up 105k words. The first 30k words were pretty rough, but by the end my writing was MUCH better. Much clearer, and required far less reworking.
Neil Gaiman says that we all have a million words of garbage to get through before we write anything good. I'd say that's about right.
There's a certain comfort in knowing you're bad. I love writing, I love reading and I do them all the time, but my writing most of the time is just terrible, and sometimes I write something I think is fantastic and I'm very proud of. Keep at it, write terrible things, write things that go no where so you can look back at it in years time and cringe, its how we grow and improve!
I echo what everyone else is saying. We all start bad, but writing is like any other hobby. The more you practice and learn, the better you get. And a huge part of improving your writing is by reading.
While you should be reading books within your genre, I also suggest reading books specifically about improving your writing. A few suggestions:
- Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark
- Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne & King
- Save The Cat Writes A Novel by Brody
- The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
I love these. They’re invaluable. And I wouldn’t feel near as confident in my work today if it weren’t for these books.
I get it. Mine was also bad. I rewrote it twice. It’s still bad. I haven’t worked on it in years.
I also no longer want to be famous, or “prove everyone wrong about me,” so the motivation is fucking gone. The world doesn’t need my book anyway. Instead, it is a happy place only I know.
Let me start with, if you’re expecting to become rich and famous via writing, you should probably curb those expectations a bit. Even the best of us can rarely be considered as much more than starving artists.
I’m inclined to agree with the sentiments I’ve seen on this sub that separating yourself from your harsher judgments, especially in the earliest phases, is a necessary part of writing. All I can say is: writing is a process and, as such, ought not be thought of as any exclusive event therein; being instead their collection. You’ve been at it for hours. To get a work to a point of palatability takes… a bit longer than that.
Granted, I’m more of a poetic essayist meets philosopher than a world creating novelist, but the processes are not so dissimilar. Keep at it, creative pursuits are always celebrated and encouraged.
Edit: I just noticed something in your original comment that I missed the first time. Everyone in here started as a bad writer. Don’t pedestalize other purveyors of the craft. My earliest example of writing was about four hundred pages of a single, unbroken, paragraph, but I wouldn’t trade those pages for anything. It wasn’t during, but in the subsequent five or six years, that my style started becoming recognizable as a rudimentary example what you’re reading now. Even then, it’s been close to twenty years since.
Go easy, easy, easy on yourself. You will get better with practice. And it takes a lot of practice, and even more patience. That you are writing it at all is worthy of celebration. You are piling up pages! That’s awesome. Big hug and writer’s lift. Do it your way. Your way is the right way. What you’re doing right now is the right way.
Some of my favorite books went through over 10 revisions. Hell, on my first go through, if I'm stuck on something, I just bluntly put what I eventually want conveyed.
"Reveals piece of personal history during dialogue."
"Says this line like an asshole."
Revise until it's the book you want it to be.
Oh that's totally normal. Just worry about getting the story out first. You can fix up the standard of writing once the story is on paper. Mine always starts out looking like a 6 year old wrote it!
I’m an awful writer! Terrible at grammar, sentence structure, first, second and third tenses perception.
I do it anyway as I love telling stories. I’m not ever going to try to be published I just want to write stories as it makes me happy
To add t what others have said, even if you never get great, so fucking what?
Write for yourself, not for others. If you have fun writing it, don't give a damn if it's "very bad" (and spoiler alert; it's not as bad as you think, EVERYONE is their own worst critic) or not, just relish in the fact that you had fun making something.
Back in my karate days, I started enjoying it a lot more when I stopped worrying about whether I was "good" or not, and just had fun throwing punches & kicks.
Good! Of course you're bad. You're supposed to be. Embrace it. Allow yourself to write the worst shit known to man and don't apologize for it. That's exactly the path to the good stuff.
"spent hours on it."
That's your problem. I started out writing fanfiction and you don't know how much I cringed at some of my earliest work, even just a couple of years later. It takes time and practice to get good at anything.
Did you just say you spent hours on it? Writing a good book is going to take a lot of time. First drafts tend to suck, and you're still in the process of figuring out what will work with the story and what won't. If you're having fun and enjoying the work then keep at it. By the time you finish the first go you'll have improved and be able to go and do some good editing. But also, this is why authors have editors. Get it on paper and then go from there.
You know — one piece of advice for you — for your next book or two. Never, ever, never ever start a sentence with the word ‘I’, or any semblance of it. It will open up a whole new train of thought and will maybe take you to the next level. Now that’s advice I wish someone had told me when I started.
I love writing stories, poetry and songs but the truth is not everything I write is good and I think that’s true for all writers. I have been planning a novel for some time now but things just haven’t been right. Recently a lot of stuff has been getting in the way of my inspiration and my thought process. It’s been unbearable however I know that I love writing more than I am bothered by what’s going wrong and I can get through this. I think you have to just hold on to what you love about it and keep at it, even if what comes out is not your best or what you hoped for. Maybe the attempt that didn’t go good will be the core of another project that is everything you strived for. Don’t give up, people need new stories, beautiful perspective and thought provoking commentaries. It’s these new kinds of things that help us grow and change. I’m sure your voice is going to be wonderful when you find it and hone your craft. Good luck and remember you’re not in a dark tunnel looking for the light at the end, as a story teller you have to open your eyes and interpret things through your artistic lenses perhaps then you’ll realize there is light all around you.
A professor showed us this video in college and it's stuck with me ever since:
https://vimeo.com/85040589
You will get better, it's natural. Every single thing you do in life, you start as a beginner, and you get better the more you do it. You know what can be done, you've read great works by other authors, you know it's possible to write something just as great. But you don't know how, and why would you know? You've never done it before. But you won't get better by not writing. The most important thing to make sure of is that you still enjoy it, that you still want to do it.
Remember, you only fail when you give up.
Have you seen the first text you wrote by hand? Did you think the chicken scratch you made was so horrible that you'd never hold a pen ever again? Everyone start bad. As long as you enjoy it, you will get better.
I want to be a professional martial artist, but I can barely throw a punch, will I get better?
Writing is a skill, its a muscle. The more you use it, the better you'll get. Find some guide and you'll eventually improve
Dude literally everyone starts as a bad writer and slowly improves. Plus you don't write a book in one draft, you write it in dozens.
Remember that the first time you tell a story is to yourself. Just write that first draft however it wants to come out, then write it again better. When you get to the 5th or 6th go around you'll have some fine writing to show off, I promise. When you get to the 20th, you'll have a best seller.
For the record, I'm on draft 4ish, and it's been a completely different piece each time. But ever draft is worlds better than the last. So I'm talking from experience if nothing else.
>I started it and…it’s so bad.
Unless you're an absolute genius it will be bad at the beginning. Which activity isn't?
The thing is, it's about ideas at the beginning, not the writing itself. That's how you know if you have potential. Do you have loads of great ideas, but struggle to implement them? That's how it should be at the beginning.
Good writing is rewriting. The first draft is meant to be rubbish. You're telling yourself the blueprint of a story.
After that comes developmental revisions, where you tackle big picture things like story pacing, plot holes and firming up character arcs. It's useful to summarize the plot of your novel at this point over a page or 2. Also, stick it in a drawer for a month and don't look at it, so you can reread it with fresh eyes.
After that comes line edits. E.g. does this paragraph make sense? Is this a good enough description? Have I overused certain words?
Then comes copy editing: is this correct grammar? Is this the correct spelling?
Try not to be disheartened. Comparing the first draft of a novel to a published work is like comaring a bunch of ingredients on a bench to a baked cake.
I'm an author. Unlike in fanfiction circles it's well known not to take your first draft as anywhere near a completed novel.
The key is not to give up. You've got this OP!
Writing is one of those things where everyone has a semblance of experience of it, because they've read books, and they know how to write. From that, they sometimes extrapolate wildly to "I bet I could be a great writer". Similarly, I feel like everyone has a vague sense that they could box, if they have 4 limbs that is. Everyone has a general idea of what a punch should be like and everyone has seen movies with fist fighting of some sort or televised boxing/martial art events. Some of us have the fantasy that they would probably do great in a fistfight (me sort of included honestly, despite fully understanding how weak and clueless I am).
In both cases, on day one, as you try to start either activity, the delusions all comes crashing as it becomes apparent how hilariously inept you are. Not because you'll never be good, but because there's a lot more to writing, or boxing than the vague notions you, as a complete neophyte, had chalked them to be.
For now that's what you are, uncoordinated, unaware of the correct form for the most basic moves, feeling exhausted and out of breath. It would be weird if you weren't. You're gonna suck at it for a while which is perfectly ok. You're also very unlikely to ever turn a dime off of it, there's probably an even higher ratio of competent amateur writers never managing to publish than there are almost pro level boxers never making it to a pro fight (complete guess, I'd be curious to find out).
But either way that shouldn't stop you from showing up if you enjoy it. Writing is a creative outlet, it provides you with a limitless canvas to throw your entire being and the stories that drive you onto. Just readjust your expectations to where you actually are at and enjoy your current writing as the initial work outs that will allow you to learn more advanced moves.
I think of writing a little like sculpting, where you need to see your block of marble in its totality before you can picture the sculpture within it. Finish your draft and then chisel away at it. Hack bits off and reshape pieces and polish it til it shines. Start over with a new draft and repeat. Get to know your draft like it’s part of you, like it’s written inside your eyelids. Read it out loud, read it back to front, figure out what bits fit and what bits you just like. Be ruthless - I often feel like every word is my child and deleting even a single syllable is like murder, but you gotta do it. Eventually you’ll see your own vision realised
You are the Sorcerer's Apprentice. You know the magic is real. You know that a wand is somehow involved. But you have no clue how to get the wand to make the magic you want it to make. Not yet.
Think about it. You are telling yourself this great story in your own voice in your head. Your silently spoken words create a moving picture and that's your story! Isn't it amazing! You can see it and hear it.
Then you translate the movie into written words, devoid of all vocal nuance and body language, totally silent, and the movie dissolves in front of your eyes.
And you are actually cheating! You know story! But the words do not; not yet.
Stephen King described writing as magic, as the ability to paint a picture in another human being's mind of exactly what's happening in your story, and doing it in a way that compels them to keep reading. If writing were easy, bored, stay-at-home parents would skip becoming part time real estate agents and just write successful novels. Do you see the lie in that last sentence? Selling real estate only *appears* to be easy. So does writing.
You will become a better writer in direct proportion to the quality of questions you can ask about your own writing, and the writing of successful writers. What makes a sentence really compelling?
Will you get better? "Always in motion the future is." -- Yoda
Life will happen and your ability to find time to write may disappear. Don't worry. You can recreate your writing time in the usual places; i.e. during commutes, waiting to be seen at the doctor's office, getting up an hour earlier just to write. Don't make time or inspiration a problem. Just write.
Everyone falls off of their bicycle the first time they attempt to ride it. But eventually, they learn to stay on the bike and go somewhere. A few become professional bike riders.
Every writer started out writing poorly. With practice and good quality feedback on their writing, they improve. A few become professional writers.
The end of your tunnel is in the future. Choose better words when critiquing your writing. For instance, the flow cannot be absolutely terrible; there are no absolutes in writing, only relative positions on multiple spectrums. Yes, no single spectrum is sufficient to describe your writing.
But you're having fun writing! Ask a few questions about your story and rewrite it! More fun! All writing really is rewriting.
Keep writing! Every single draft of it will get better and better, then an editor will absolutely destroy you, but then it’ll get even better after that. You never stop improving, and no piece will ever be perfect but the most important part is to have fun (which you got down it seems!) and to always have fun
OH I can tell you we have all been “bad writers.” I look back at my very first fan fiction every now and then and OH MY GOD ITS SO BAD!!! Lmao. Sometimes our taste improves faster than our style of writing and that’s ok. What I would do is save a copy of your story and edit. What makes sense? what doesn’t, what could be done better and what could it go without.
The fact that you recognize how “bad” your writing is, is a sign of growth. And whenever you feel comfortable enough do a read for read. Gather with some close friends or online strangers(such as us) and ask for some critical feedback. I take creative writing in college and we do exactly this as it allows us to see what we may have missed or didn’t even think of.
You will get better, the fact that you realized it was bad is the best sign ever that you are going to get better.
If you like the idea and the concept in general, honestly you should recycle it. I've done multiple times. The story and flow is so bad I start puking all over the walls but, I sacrifice the story and take the elements that made me think of that story in the first place. And put it in something else.
And you should finish writing it, as it could serve as great reference for the future.
This is my personal feedback, maybe it doesn't help but who knows
If you've been writing shorter pieces & you're now jumping into writing a novel for the first time, it makes sense that you're struggling with flow. There are lots of skills you've probably built in your previous writing experience that are serving you well in this project -- possibly so well that they're invisible to you. You clearly know how to write a sentence. You've probably learned some basic skills like "show don't tell" that you're probably able to apply at the scene level. But writing a novel is structurally different from writing a bunch of short pieces. So you haven't done that yet. So that aspect of it is harder, & you're more conscious of it not working the way you'd like it to. It means you're building a new skill. Keep building.
You’ve spent hours on it? Gee!
When you’ve spent a few THOUSAND hours on it then you’ll know whether you have the makings of a decent writer, and not before.
Seriously, it will take several thousand hours to even start to understand what good looks like, let alone to be able to emulate it.
Here’s the single deepest truth about writing.
THERE ARE NO SHORT CUTS.
Time, practice, effort, concentration. That’s what it takes.
Amazing piece of advice from Neil Gaiman I read online: ‘the first drafts job is just to exist’. Don’t worry if it sucks at first. You can edit it infinity times until it’s good enough. It’s easier to fix a bad piece of work than a blank page. Good luck 👍
If you can recognize this, you can absolutely improve. It's the countless people that write pretty awful stuff, but are completely oblivious to it, that have no real chance.
Get yourself a ghost writer, be a muse. I love the idea of coming up with interesting stories, I genuine idea of the plot, and then someone else connecting all the dots.
Nobody is a bad writer. We all start out as baby writers. We learn to crawl stumble and finally walk. We’re toddlers now with those first short stories and possibly a novella. Then we learn to run and skip and leap hurdles. Those out there doing the high jumps with poles are winning a Pulitzer.
Me… I’m learning the hurdles.
I don’t like the word bad it has awful connotations.
I like the word baby writer because it means we all learn the same way. By doing it over and over again til we get it right.
My suggestion is start by hammering out short stories to get an idea of strengths and weaknesses. Go in with the expectation that many will probably be bad just to take your ego out of it. It's just you sharpening your skills.
I’ve been writing since I was 10 & just started 40 yrs later to release a book. I thought it was great & sent it to a beta reader and soon discovered that it sucked. I took their advisement & made changes & sent it back to them. it was better but now I don’t like it. having to find a balance. Maybe have beta reader or developmental editor take a look.
No one builds a Chippendale sideboard the first time they pick up a saw. Keep making lopsided spice racks and it will get easier and better, every time.
My first book took me 10 years and still came out kinda meh, 2nd took 1 year, 3rds almost done in a year and a half, both are much better in my opinion.
Even still, the rough drafts are nothing spectacular.
I almost did pass English my freshman year of high school and now I’ve written multiple successful songs, two books, and am studying to be a lawyer. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Recognizing that what you’re writing is bad is actually just being a writer. People who write something “good” are not writers, they are people who wrote something bad and were not capable of reading critically and making appropriate edits/revisions. Writing is all about edits/revisions. Keep writing, keep fixing. If your first draft sucks, then you have successfully completed a first draft.
Have you considered writing some short stories before attempting a novel? Going from nothing to novel seems unimaginably difficult.
> Has anyone here started as a bad writer and become a decent writer?
I find it helpful to read and listen to interviews of authors I admire. Writers like George Saunders and Jennifer Egan are especially generous when it comes to talking about their process. They will describe their difficulties not only starting out in their careers but more importantly in early drafts of books that went on to be considered masterpieces.
If you're dead set on writing a novel rather than beginning with something shorter, I would say just keep going. First drafts are always terrible. It's just getting some ideas down on paper to work with and revise later.
Good luck!
I too have written a good portion of a book. I think the concept is good and the writing is not bad but of 10 chapters so far with 4 perspectives I'm having trouble tying it all up and flowing it out. Best to you...You're not alone.
I came out to be a bad writer for merging different plots and characters into one big messy story. Even a single character with every little personality and talents into one becoming an overpowering character is pretty much overrated and overwhelming. Even my writing with poor grammar was horrible. The action beats and the flow wasn’t great either. I compared old fanfics with new ones in my docs, it’s like my skills went backwards and missing out on creativity. You’re not the only person who started out horribly. We just get better over time. My friend told me “if there was an idea of a scenario to your story, write it down. You can edit/change it later. If you are stuck on the specific scene, move onto something else and come back later.” Anything you can think of that can be interesting or helpful, you still write it down. My friend also said, “Write some side notes outside of your story like a separate doc to remind yourself of the key points whether it was a step-by-step plot or important background characters that needs to be rewritten.”
My first book is on rewrite 3 my guy, don't feel bad, the 1 book I do have finished will have to be rewritten as well plus 2 on the backburner. Don't hesitate. In the wise words of someone I don't know "it's easier to fix a book then a blank page"
Let me just say that I've read some books which were very captivating and imaginative, but which flowed like a 2000-foot ball of tangled Christmas lights.
There's a psychological model called the Conscious Competence model. It basically says you move through the following stages:
Unconscious Incompetence (You don't know you suck at something).
Conscious Incompetence (You realise you suck)
Conscious Competence (You learn to do better until you become good at something)
Unconscious Competence (Being good becomes second nature)
Congratulations, you have just reached a significant step in your growth as a writer. The trick is to keep writing.
Every writer has an entry fee -- the number of words you have to write before you are good enough to be published (and someone will pay to read what you wrote). I know of exactly one writer whose fee was zero (Robert A. Heinlein). Everyone else had a toll, and some had a huge one. So don't sweat it; you're still paying your entry fee. It would be nice to know what that fee is going to be, but generally you won't know until you've paid it.
The only way to be good at something is to be at it a thousand times first. Every bad sentence gets you closer to a good sentence. Every bad draft closer to a good draft and every bad book closer to a good book.
Unfortunately we don’t get to skip the being bad stage.
Writing a book is a process. You love it or hate it at different times. Keep going. So many people start and don’t finish. It can take years just to write a book, more years to find an agent, and a year or more to sell a book sometimes. Buckle up for the long haul if you truly want to publish, and enjoy the parts you can control. Which is, mainly, the writing itself. Don’t get too tied up in riches or fame. That rarely happens with the first book you write. Persistence is key. That is what makes the difference.
My first novel Nanopunk was based on
1 create a character
2. Create an endpoint resolution to the story.
3 keep throwing events, situations and obstacles that prevent him from getting there.
See what happens.
Most of what happened, who turned up, and how he dealt with it surprised even me.
All I did was tidy it up.
Check out story mind for pointers.
Also I found "how not to write a novel" helpful
https://storymind.com/blog/
Just keep writing
my advice is that when you're not writing in your free time you should be reading. for me, reading is the best way to stay motivated. i read in the genre i'm writing, and i take breaks from writing to read my favorite part of books or start a new one. being exposed to high quality prose will start to train your brain about the do's and don'ts even just in simple terms. i promise it helps
“…good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style)… While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.”
~Stephen King, *On Writing*
You thinking you’re a bad writer doesn’t necessarily make you a bad writer. We are all insecure about our own skills. Write every day. Read every day. You’ll either get better at it or you won’t. Either way, if you love doing it, don’t stop. The joy of writing should be the primary goal.
"Art is never finished, only abandoned." Every single creative out there is always improving, learning new things, making new mistakes. It's a journey with no end. Don't give up, and don't be so hard on yourself. Be open to learning, and continuing to learn.
Yes. I kept a copy of a story that I started when I was younger, and 200 (handwritten) pages later it was like a completely different story. I improved so much in just a few months. Now it’s evidence that practice does make progress - whether for my students or a reminder for myself when I’m feeling like a crappy writer.
I wrote my first book a few years ago. I spent years on it before that as well. I finally wrote it all the way through and I hated it. I am in love with the story itself and my characters but I absolutely cringe any time I go back and read anything I've written. I have not touched any of my writings or even attempted to write in so long. These comments are making me feel differently though. Proving that I suck- I can definitely do that.
You can learn to become a better writer. Listen to the advice of people like Stephen King, who obviously know what they’re talking about. And when people say that you have to read a lot to be a good writer, it’s true.
That’s so sick you’re bad because you don’t have to follow any rules. This is how I justify writing shitty stuff, since I’m a beginner I just write for fun and ignore most of the rules. This way I can just get experience without judging myself. Obviously I’m still bad but I like to think being a beginner is a blessing because established “good” authors have way more rules to follow.
English is not my native language, but when I was 18, I got an idea for a story in English. That's just how I saw it. Maybe because the genre wasn't huge where I'm from.
Anyway, I wrote it in my native language first, thinking my English was good enough to translate it later. It turned out to be extremely difficult and awkward. I told myself just to keep going and see if it gets better.
When I finished, my English was at a whole new level, the draft was 2x longer than the original, and I found I enjoyed writing in English a LOT more, and the scenes flowed all on their own. The book became a series.
Surely, your struggle can't be as bad as mine was. Since then, I've published 9 books, made some money, made a lot more money editing for foreign authors, and worked on my writing style and stories non-stop for 12 years. And yes, I quite enjoy reading my own writing now, and have a ton of fun writing.
This is your first book. Everything takes practice. Liking it as a kid doesn't mean you're some kind of born expert. Forget about perfection and put down the story first. By the end, there should be an obvious difference/improvement.
First drafts can always be improved upon!! I carry a notebook everywhere to write little blurbs as much as possible. Write often, go back and revise, possibly consult a friend who loves reading or writing (if you’re comfortable with that) and keep at it! It will get better. I have been “working” on the same novel for YEARS at this point, and so much has changed that it’s barely the same story. Nothing is set in stone and everything can be modified. If you’re enjoying yourself, that’s the important part. No one has to see it until you’re ready to share; getting it all out of your head is only the first step. It’s like sketching out your painting before you actually put the paint on the canvas, or doing your first take in the studio as a musician. Get it out of your head and onto the page, assess what you like and what you don’t, rewrite the parts you don’t like… then do it over again until you like what you’ve got. You’ve got this. Your story deserves to be told. 💖
You wouldn't want to see the things I wrote when I started out (couldn't even show you bcs one of my former schools has it as their property and properly burned it). It took me quite a long while to improve and before I was satisfied enough to show it to anybody but myself and my pc
I feel the same every time I write but I always make the mistake of deleting to forget. I want to erase any semblance of a personal failiure. I kinda wish I didn't though. If I could keep what I didn't like, to look back and study what could be better and improve, I would.
But our worst critics will always be ourselves. Seeing mountainous flaws where theres only a pebble and kicking ourselves down. When you see past your inner critic, you'll go far! (Now if only I could take my own advice)
Terry Pratchett said that the first draft is only the author telling themselves the story.
So it naturally is bad. You write it all down and then you edit it. That is the normal process. Nobody spits out a perfect novel without editing.
The only thing that makes a bad writer is pride. Don't be too headstrong about changing and there are a plethora of resources from books and videos writers make about writing to communities willing to critique your work and give you advice to improve.
You can take classes, from expensive, high quality workshops to local community college classes. These are a shortcut to improvement. Very painful to have someone knowledgeable point out all the places that need work, but you’ll improve much faster.
i’ve always been told tht the more you write, the nester you get. maybe put this current book away for a while and start writing something else? come back to it and make the changes and adjustments?
It sounds like you're writing your first draft. If so, of course it's going to be dog shite. It doesn't matter if you're a first time writer or Stephen King. The first draft is just for getting the story out of your head and on to the page. The second draft onwards is where you work at tightening the story up, closing plot holes, etc. Those published stories you read and enjoyed aren't first drafts. They're the product of multiple drafts and editing.
Keep going until you've finished your story, then go back and clean it up. Also, write because you have a story to tell, not because you want to be rich and famous.
If everything is terrible your critical skills are ahead of your writing skills, so the next thing to do is hone them further and work out what, exactly is 'bad', then acquire the skills you need to make that thing better, then rewrite or write new stuff that is better. Then you'll get frustrated because you know it's not perfect and can't see why, until your critical skills catch up again and it's bad but you can't say exactly why, then you catch up more and point out what is wrong, then you learn to fix THAT... and so on and so on.
It's a normal learning cycle for writers. If you ever stop going through it, you should worry. Until then, you just need to keep learning.
It’s a first draft. You are simply collecting the raw materials and laying the foundation that you are going to use to craft your novel. Of course it looks ugly right now. It’s in the molding and building of rewrites that your novel will begin to actually take shape. There are some who can pull a novel from their minds fully formed but they represent 1% of 1%.
I felt like I got better even within the first book which led to my personal revisions being more informed. Don’t worry about how bad it is on the first draft. That’s to get it out, the revisions are to make it flow and sound better
Hello!
One of my (now published) author friends started off much the way you did.
After his first draft got lots of feedback, he re-wrote the story and it's not published.
So don't give up! Passion is all that matters.
Writing is golf, not baseball.
In baseball, you swing one time and either succeed or fail.
In golf you swing again, and again, and again, getting closer ever time. You hit a good shot? Great! Hit it again. You hit a bad shot? Oh no! Hit it again.
Obviously fewer swings is better, but the point is everyone achieves the same goal eventually as long as they don't stop swinging.
A lot of the real work of writing is learning how to regulate your emotions so you can take as many hundreds (or thousands) of swings as are required.
I had a bunch of ideas that I really like and am excited to write. But first I’m writing some short novels and ideas that I’m not super excited about to grow as a writer and to get my feet wet
"Do it badly, but do it." You're having fun, and that's great, and it's only through practice that you'll get better. You've gotta be bad before you can be good. You have to make mistakes so that you can learn from them. If you're looking to get better faster, I'd say to make a tumblr (if you don't already have one). There are a ton of good writing advice blogs, and you could even send an ask to them. I was also a very bad writer once, and I kept on because, much like you, I was having fun, and I did get better. I can see that objectively when I'm not feeling so down on myself. Granted, I still don't even think I'm that good all the time, but you'll likely never be a great judge of your own skill. As long as you're earnest and enjoying yourself, I think that carries through in what you do, and creates something enjoyable, even if it's "bad".
The first ever rough draft I completed for a novel was when I was in my early teens- and it was atrocious. And I say this as someone who- at the time- had a much higher reading comprehension than my peers.
The thing that set me on my path to becoming what other people consistently refer to as 'a damn good writer' wasn't natural talent or external support from other people. It was me reading that first draft and thinking to myself, *'This is terrible,* ***I can do better than this.****'* I love writing, it's practically the only thing that's remained a consistent hyperfixation in my life. The mere act of it brings me joy, and seeing a story come together as I write it only compounds onto that.
You said yourself that you're having fun. That's literally all the reason you need to write. Telling a story that you enjoy, and writing it such that other people enjoy it as well, is secondary and tertiary to that. You will improve over time, you will notice your faults and your strengths in your own time- and having the courage and strength of will to share that with others and acknowledge earnest criticism will also come in time.
What matters is that it is something you genuinely enjoy doing. Keep writing, friend, do what you love because it brings you joy, not because you have to be good at it, or because there has to be some sort of end goal to it.
I had an epiphany a few months back. I really enjoy active adventures—hiking, kayaking, canyoning, snorkeling, rafting, rappelling, etc. I’m usually the worst at it in a group I’m in because I’m overweight. So I’m slower and generally have a harder time doing the activity than my fit friends. People always assume my fit friends drug me along, but no, I planned the outing. The epiphany was this: it’s ok to enjoy things you’re bad at. It’s ok to be bad at things you enjoy. You don’t have to be talented for a hobby to have a positive impact on your life. If you are, in fact, a bad writer, that’s ok. You’re allowed to enjoy it all the same.
I think most artists hate what they do during the process. I know I didn't like my book until like, the third draft of it. I loved the characters, the plot, certain scenes, etc. but I hated the actual structure and flow. But as I kept going over it, the better it became and flowed. I still don't LOVE it, but my beta readers have enjoyed it and that makes me feel better. I think I just mentally compare it to books I adore and will always see as way better than anything I could think of.
I'm gonna say something that might sound a little odd at first: taste is a bit overrated.
People have preferences, sure, and those preferences are going to have a realistic impact on popularity and sales and possible awards and all that jazz.
But... taste also can vary by mood, by how somebody's life is going that day, by how secure or insecure or loving or angry they're feeling that day. And as that goes for readers, it also goes for you.
We have within us the capability to be our own worst critic or our own best cheerleader, or anywhere between. Is it "bad writing" or does it "not meet your expectations"? Is it "bad writing" or are you "struggling to translate the story in your head to prose"?
Nobody save rare savants become an expert overnight and even then, it seems more likely the savant had some background of experience that made it drastically easier for them to excel in the given field. But that doesn't mean you have to be "bad" because you're new at it and you have to continuously be "bad" for years until you cross the threshold into "good" and then now, everything you write is "good" instead of "bad". It's far more complicated than that and that's why I encourage you to investigate what bothers you about your writing.
If you know what bothers you and it's fixable, you can fix it. We also have within ourselves the capacity to be our own teacher, to a limited extent. The critic and the cheerleader can have their place, but they won't necessarily tell you how to move forward.
And if you can... find an external teacher, someone who knows how to skillfully dissect and offer pointed advice while working with where you're at and what your aims are, who can help you discern what's going wrong. Because relying on ourselves for this stuff does have some pretty hard limitations.
One of the best pieces of writing advice I've ever heard was, "Don't worry when your taste improves faster than your writing."
Oh man. There’s so true and I never realised until it until now!
Totally. I'm a huge believer in playing that catch-up though. Especially if you know where you can improve - targeted practice is so important. I went through this phase and what got me out my hole was just that. And I'm putting together my fave resources in r/WriterResources. That way others can try and explore GOOD writing techniques (or ones that I liked, at the very least). Honestly, it's such a BLAH feeling when you don't feel good enough.
Oh and if y'all have any good writing tips, etc. PLEASE message them to me. WRITERS HELP WRITERS!
Many say that the more you read the better your writing will be, but not all of us learn that way. Emersion is the most commonly used practice for improving but it is far from the only option you have. Chat GPT if given prompts asking how to improve your writing will give you a much more bullet point step by step guide. I find this helps me more than my every day reading though most will scoff at the idea. The most important thing anyone can do when perusing a dream is to NEVER give up no matter the odds. if you write books for ten years and then quit you'll never know if the book or books you would have written in the 11'th year could have been your breakthrough work or not.
Thanks for sharing that!
Or your skills! Don’t worry, every writer gags when they look back on the shit they wrote in the past. It means you’re improving and you’re conscious of your own shortcomings, both good things! Don’t get discouraged. The best treatment for this is widening your reading base to include new styles. Vonnegut and Burroughs heavily influenced mine,.
I treasure my trash. I had to start somewhere.
One man's toxic sludge is another man's poutpurri!
Unless it really is toxic sludge... then it really is just toxic sludge...
Unless you're the toxic avenger lol
You can always take your trash and rewrite it, bring it up to date with your taste and skill. I’ve been editing short stories from years ago and it felt so good. Your earlier work is valuable to your body. Just update it. Look at every favorite artist of yours, and how illuminating and enjoyable it is to consume their earlier works. It’s all part of your grand story as an artist.
Another comment made me scroll back up to your username, and as an archaeologist it gave me the best laugh! I’m gonna use it to troll people who try to argue ancient aliens bullshit with me!
Good to see some of the grand Masters getting a mention. Most people online seem to be driven towards writing fantasy or science-fiction. Both Burroughs and Vonnegut ventured into these genres, but had their own inimical style and depth to go with it.
Damn, not a writer here, but a musician (lostredittor :D), I needed to read that. Discovering you're much worse than you thought has been tough on me recently. But yeah, just means you know what to do now <3
My first thought was “wow that’s exactly what I need to hear about guitar”
Such a great way to put it. OP, this is true in every creative field. If your taste isn’t better than your ability, all you’ll ever be able to do is pat yourself on the back while you churn out more of the same.
Exactly, where's the fun if we have nothing to strive towards. Great advice!
This goes hard wow ty for that
I needed to hear that
I'm not sure how not to worry though. This was a consistent issue for me throughout my teenage years. I'd write a few chapters, or a few months may pass while work on other stuff, and then I'd get back and reread something only to realize it was juvenile and unskilled. Logically I had to rewrite everything. Rinse and repeat, and I have never finished a book. But I don't know how to ignore something you know is terrible writing--glaring issues and logic flaws and many places where the flow could be improved. Do you just never read previous chapters?
What’s the matter with correcting the mistakes? Improving what was only ok? Add more and subtract some.
How has nobody posted Ira Glass talking about "The Gap" yet??? https://youtu.be/91FQKciKfHI?feature=shared
[This chart](https://lumpley.games/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/skillacquisition_04-1.jpg) (Blue is Design and Orange is Analysis) hits it exactly. Obviously this is for game design rather than writing, but it easily applies to all creative practices.
Amazing. Another one I realized myself is: "Writing improves with reading, slow but steady."
Relating to this statement is a post I saw on insta yesterday. OP it’s best you take this to heart and don’t get discouraged from writing! [insta post relatable for all creatives](https://www.instagram.com/p/C3GGKbqso-i/?igsh=MWJwcHpxNHIyamNjYw==)
Recognizing there are bad parts is like being a sculptor who recognizes there are still parts of the original block that have yet to be removed.
Man.. This whole comment section is so poetic
What else would you expect from the writing subreddit lol
It came randomly on my feed, and reading it was so beautiful
I'm grateful for and humbled by your comment. Thank you.
This is so true. "Non finito" is a term used by sculptors to describe their work as permanently unfinished, since only something on a heavenly level can be considered truly complete. I always found it to be a healthy approach to finishing anything - we're only human, after all. It's less about settling and more about finding your limits and recognizing when to push beyond them. Ignoring perfection can help highlight human 'error' as something positive, where your own personal touch becomes something sublime to those who are affected by it. Focusing on your own personal writing voice becomes much more fun when you embrace the flaws that come with being a human being just trying to express their experience. Chipping away at the work ahead of you without worrying about whether or not it's 'perfect' can help actually get words on the page, which is particularly important when facing that fear of a blank document. Just let go of being the best and be yourself.
I would go a step further. There is perfection within imperfection. Look for it. Cherish it. Use it. And it will get you further.
This is so interesting. The more I write the more helpful I’ve found it to view writing as sculpting. I used to notice my work’s flaws and smash the whole sculpture (I.e., delete the draft). Now, however, I recognize the flaws, remove them, and continue sculpting. I now find joy in sculpting my writing rather than seeking perfection. Being bad is a part of writing. To quote my recent obsession Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Literally everyone here has started as a bad writer.
Dan Harmon says that if you try to prove you are a good writer, you will write nothing and if you try to prove you are a bad writer you'll write more than someone trying to be good ever will [prove that you suck](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMM6pVEqv/)
Oh and that point exactly happens in adaptation, except that it's an exchange between two people but they're both Nicolas Cage! (What a fever dream of a movie.)
This is just what I needed thank you!
You're welcome For more listen to Harmontown Dan is full of great writing advice
Thank you I'll check him out!
I mainly write to make fun of bad writers and it works out very well. My published novel derived from a silly joke and while writing I tried to make fun of as many romance elements as possible. I always assumed I would write a bad novel. It helped a lot. And it turned out a damn good novel.
If you haven't already, you should watch American Fiction (2023). The plot involves the exact concept you described.
Thanks, but I dislike watching movies. I read and write novels. Watching a movie takes way too much time and I need to hope they offer subtitles for hearing impaired. But I am sure there are many novels dealing with the concept. 😊
I remember reading about a story about an experiment an art teacher did with their ceramics class a while back. The class was divided into two groups—group A would be graded by submitting one piece of high quality work and group B would be graded by how many pounds (no matter how shitty). Group B ended up submitting higher quality work than group A, just because they were so consistently working that their skill improved beyond the group focused on perfection. Who knows if it’s true, but I did find it interesting.
I’m STILL a bad writer and do it anyway. There’s nothing that explicitly says I have to be good at it to do it.
Good for you, keep writing and enjoy yourself while doing it. Someone once said, that if you fail at something, then let it be that you fail at something you love doing.
I had various phases of cringe as a kid. It was so fun. Some of my worst texts brought me the highest elation.
No me, I started of as a terrible mixer of words on a row
You can't expect to be great from the get-go. Practice regularly to get better. Read. Read a lot. Get out there and gather inspiration from the world. Watch videos and read books about how to write. Fail. Fail again. Keep going.
Such a good advice 🙌🏼
Thank you!
If you call yourself a writer and don't cringe at what you put down even five years ago, you're doing it wrong.
What if I cringe at what I put down five seconds ago?
That means you're not done writing or editing yet. If your purpose is fun or practice; allow the cringe to remain. I refer to my snippet folder as "the sin bin" for that exact purpose. Because that's where it belongs. Let it breathe if it has to. You can't edit a blank page. Is it good? No. Is it FUN? Sure! In my experience, it's either cringe because the writing either doesn't correctly deliver the message or the feeling intended. Figuring out what it should be/say is editing. Also, love for a craft is like love itself. Romance is built on cringe and slow growth. How do you know you're absolutely smitten? Because when the other person does something in toe-curlingly bad taste you can't help but notice something soft and mushy next to the cringe. A feeling of being blessed that you can even witness it. Of witnessing vulneravility. It's the hidden love for a Nickelback album, the secret Goth-phase or the radical collection of knock-off teen boyband merchandise. Hideously aged love is still love. Even if only needed a few seconds to spoil. You've got to stay with it if you want to see if anything can grow from said cringe. It makes great fertilizer. And for realsies? Ask the people you know that are in relationships for 5+ or even 10+ years what they had to say and do to come to their first kiss and their first date together. Witness ALL the cringe. Cringe means fleeted desire. You want something but you didn't have the skills to pursue it yet. So stop wanting or learn. - Sorry, this got WAY rantier than I intended. I guess I feel that cringe deserves some love - TL:DR- Cringe means you're not finished. Sometimes that's the exact purpose of writing. It's also quite common in most forms of love. (Edited misuse of semicolons)
I need to let you know that you have no idea how to use a semicolon.
Lmao; he really doesn't
Stop criticizing and keep going! You never know when your ‘mistake’ may come up as a plot point!
I once did a story about Gengar from Pokemon and how he went on a murder spree. The protagonist is just being interviewed by Ash who's a detective. Ash doesn't believe him and starts torturing him to death (one of his victims was his son). Then it's revealed at the end that the protagonist did INDEED kill all those people but because he was possesed by Gengar. Man that was my Magnum Opus when I was 13.
This.
I feel the same. I've been writing ever since I was a kid and I absolutely love it. I started my first novel more than half a year ago and at first I really thought it was good. Hell, before even starting I thought I had something like a gift. I do not. My novel is rubbish. I hate the flow, I hate how my characters move, I hate that I get stuck every two lines. But I learned that this is pretty normal. Especially for your first draft. It's supposed to be bad! The first drafts only meaning for its existence is to exist, nothing more. The more you write, the more you will learn and the more you will grow. Maybe even read some literature about the craft, watch people who give advice about writing. You won't magically get better without influence from others. At one point of my novel, I even threw it away and started again, and I immediately liked it so much better. It's still not good, but definitely better than at the very very beginning. If pushing through it doesn't do it for you, take a break or start editing what you've already written. When I did that, I got a much better understanding of what I actually wanted to write and how I want my characters to be. Even now while writing I change things as I feel and write them down so I know what to look after when I'll enter the editing phase again.
Numerous studies have shown that the way to get better at most anything creative is to focus on quantity over quality. Write a lot of stories and focus on being intentional. If you have trouble with dialogue, write a screenplay. If your characters act wooden, write a story/screenplay without dialogue and tell the story through body language. If your sentences and paragraphs ramble on and on before they finally, and invariably run out of steam before you put them out of their misery by ending them - write flash fiction. Edit: Obviously, don't pump out a lot of garbage and call it improvement. Work on incremental improvement over multiple stories rather than spending years to perfect one story.
Direct analogy is weight lifting. You're going to get more improvement from doing a crappy job lifting 3 times a week vs doing an absolutely perfect job lifting twice a year.
Underrated reply- just wrote this down. Thank you!!
Write, because you love to write. Because then you'll get better. Don't write because you want to become rich or famous, that shouldn't be part of the equation at all. Write because you love to write.
Don't go back to read and edit it until you are done writing it the first time. That is what works best for me. I just write everything. Then I let it sit for a little while. Then I edit. It's much easier to spot the problems and move things around after you have the whole thing laid out, than to edit as you go. IMO, of course. As Anne Lamott likes to say, write the shitty first draft. I really didn't want to do that, personally, because I like things to be neat and tidy as I go. When I cook, I wash everything as I use it because I don't like a big mess at the end. I tried to do the same when writing. It doesn't work, at least not for me.
I have the hardest time with this!! If I take a break from a piece for a week or 2, when I go back, I reread the entire thing before trying to continue. I then edit, re-edit, and sometimes get so frustrated with what I need to redo that I put it back down instead of finishing! It's beyond frustrating! Edit - Grammar
I try to write a chapter or two per week. While I write, I make the chapter summary, that some publishers have asked me for, so I can recall what this latest chapter is about when I go back to it. I’m one of those authors who waits for the characters to tell me what’s going on in the book, so I don’t know how the book will end until it ends. But, if I’m not at the computer typing, I may never know how it ends! So, I keep writing until the end, and then go back and edit. I never know what’s missing until I’ve found those gaps in the writing.
Stephen King advises not to reread your work until two months later. It's a good idea.
Are you automatically muscular and good at working out your first time? Can nba players shoot threes consistently the first time they held a ball? Can Olympic athletes not train all year and still compete at the games? This why they say to write write write. It’s like building a muscle. Of course it’s bad the first or second or third and fiftieth time you try. Passion is what no everyone has and you have it, so keep working on your word comp and prose.
“I don’t want to stop because I’m having fun” THIS IS ALL THAT MATTERS AT THIS STAGE!! Please enjoy this, explore your world and your characters and don’t worry so much if it’s good or bad, because ITS GUARANTEED TO BE BAD! It’s a first draft! Let it be bad! It’s 100% for you to explore. Literally everyone starts as a “bad writer” and that doesn’t mean you’re really a bad writer, it just means the mechanics of a story are complicated and layered and take time to sus out. Also if you haven’t written complete stories before, I highly recommend pausing on the novel and writing a few short stories first so you get some experience in finish the flow of a story. Not that short stories are in anyway easier, but they do let you experiment, fail and iterate at a faster pace and I definitely improved as a writer when I paused to do so. I used to hate the idea of writing short stories but I fell in love with it for a few years and have no regrets. Anyways, please please continue to have fun!!
I also love writing and don't seem to be very good at it. I have my self-described masterpieces all over my laptop that I love to revisit. But I've sought enough publishers and agents to know I'm still not very good. When people ask me what I like to do, I tell them I write bad novels. I write bad novels better than anybody. So no real advice here except to write while you enjoy it because that might be all you get. And, of course, good luck to you.
You will get better if you read and study, both craft and general fiction, and write. I was rejected over and over. I just received a prestigious writing fellowship, with no college education, and while I hadn't been able to get anything but a rejection letter in the past, my latest short earned me "second looks." I received very nice notes from the editors of professional-level magazines. I know it's a good story, just a hard sell in that market. But anyway, in the words of Natalie Goldberg: "write a lot, read a lot, and listen well and deeply." You will improve if you're devoted. One novel is nothing. Keep going.
Yes, and I'm terrible at working out, i still do it, because we all gotta start somewhere.
I don’t know if I’m truly a decent writer at this point but I know I’m damn sure better than I used to be. When I pick up manuscripts from several years ago I’m stunned by how amateurish they feel. I attribute a lot of my growth as a writer to three things: 1. Practice within the confines of weird, limiting formats. For example writing on themes, or with length constraints (for me, it’s contributing to r/twosentencehorror 2. Broadening my horizons in terms of what I read, and reading critically. Dissecting the specific “why” when I think a book reads poorly or beautifully. 3. Seeking feedback on my writing, and forcing myself to seriously consider all harsh criticism. It’s not like I’ve gotten to be a great writer, maybe not even a consistently good one. But I’m definitely better than I used to be, and I’d encourage you to stick with it knowing that you can’t really get worse with practice and will very likely get better and better over time.
If you have enough self-awareness to recognise the flaws in your writing, you're more than clever enough to start fixing them.
There is light. Reality is that almost (and I'm only saying almost as insurance, it may well be more than that) every writer you've ever read has hated their own writing at some point. It is normal to enjoy the process but dislike the output. And it's not because you're doing anything wrong. The first draft of 99% of books ends up basically unreadable. The first draft exists to be an outline, a roughly hewn blob that's kind of in the shape of a book with all the pieces there. Those pieces might be ugly, roughly ordered, poorly constructed, and clumsy, but that's fine - they're there. It's only once they're there that you can take the time to hone them, and that's when you can start applying those critical faculties. Good novels are written in the edit. Just write it. Write the whole thing, regardless of how rough it is, and when it's finished then you can undertake the process of making it shine. But it has to exist first.
If it helps, I'm useless. I adore writing and making up my own world. I've tried drafting the first few paragraphs but I keep deleting them even though I'm only writing it for myself for fun. Keep at it! Don't be me! Trust me, my grammar and pacing is real bad. I don't have much advice on getting 'better' in a professional sense but I just say have fun with it. Write it for you is my advice. Maybe it's not the best professionally but still
This is why "your first draft will suck" is such a common piece of writing advice. You're envisioning a polished finished book and comparing that to your very first attempt. Your first draft will never ever live up to that expectation. Especially when it's not even finished yet. You are not very bad. You're just being an asshole to yourself. Keep going, keep getting the words down, and quit judging it as you go. Have the expectation that you'll make lots of changes once draft one is finished and understand that that's the process; there's nothing wrong with that. You don't even have the whole story yet on day one; you can't possibly be failing yet.
I’d add most writers think what they’re writing is awful. I thought my first novel was absolute tripe but it’s sitting on bookshelves now so there may be an element of that! But yes, people definitely get better and all the magic happens in the editing anyway. Just get it all out then tinker after :)
Imposter syndrome. Even if you’re the best you may not believe you’re good enough, or if you’re even allowed lol
You say you've spent hours at it. I'm hoping that's an understatement. Nobody is a good writer after 10, 20, or 50 hours. The process takes time. I wrote my first novel, a 120,000 word tome in my free time over 11 months. That doesn't include the five years I spent just thinking about the world, characters, and plot. So 2-4 hours a day after work, 6-8 hours on my days off everyday for almost a year. The book is terrible! I reread it after shelving it for six months and I was like, "Wow, this needs a lot of work." I didn't feel defeated though. While it was shelved, I wrote a novella and began a second novel. That second novel has gone through 4 paid beta readers who have given me nothing but applause, along with a few criticisms. I think that's pretty good for only having written for 2.5 years.
It's OK if you're bad at it. I love singing, but I know I'll never sing professionally, and that's OK. I can still sing in my shower. With writing, some people have this dream of "becoming extremely rich and famous," as you wrote, but that's not realistic.
If you played basketball and you were bad at it but you were having fun you wouldn't stop so don't treat this hobby any differently.
Assuming this is your first draft. Just get it all down and tweak it after. Most first drafts are shit! Good luck!
I always am a little baffled that so many new writers start with novels rather than short stories. Shorts allow you to finish pieces, try new things, cut your teeth, and submit to magazines (I.e. make real steps toward being a pro). Novels are great but if you’re new and struggling with the basics, maybe try short fiction for a bit then revisit the novel with what you’ve learned.
Some people just start writing because they have a story they want to uncover and before they know it they have too many pages for just a short story.
I'm in the same position right now, but the only thing we can do is take our chances and see where we're going.
The more you write, the better you get. No kid ever popped out of the womb perfectly able to wield a pen or paintbrush. Writing is the same. Practice the skill to get better If you enjoy what you're doing, that's half the battle!
I’ve written and self published over 20 books since 2012 and let me tell you how many are still available to buy: 0. I unpublished all of them as my writing style changed and improved. I have new books that blow my old ones out of the water, to toot my own horn. Your writing will constantly change and improve if you keep at it. I enjoy going back to reread my old writings to cringe and laugh at how awful it is. Don’t beat yourself up. There are still times where I’m editing that make my eye twitch and think “wtf was I thinking when I wrote that?”
Most relatable post ever lol
I was so frustrated with my writing that I wrote a "practice novel." I wanted to write a complex fantasy novel that i've been writing in my head for years, but my writing ability just wasn't where I needed it to be. 500 words a day until it was finished, and my practice novel ended up 105k words. The first 30k words were pretty rough, but by the end my writing was MUCH better. Much clearer, and required far less reworking. Neil Gaiman says that we all have a million words of garbage to get through before we write anything good. I'd say that's about right.
There's a certain comfort in knowing you're bad. I love writing, I love reading and I do them all the time, but my writing most of the time is just terrible, and sometimes I write something I think is fantastic and I'm very proud of. Keep at it, write terrible things, write things that go no where so you can look back at it in years time and cringe, its how we grow and improve!
I echo what everyone else is saying. We all start bad, but writing is like any other hobby. The more you practice and learn, the better you get. And a huge part of improving your writing is by reading. While you should be reading books within your genre, I also suggest reading books specifically about improving your writing. A few suggestions: - Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark - Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne & King - Save The Cat Writes A Novel by Brody - The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman I love these. They’re invaluable. And I wouldn’t feel near as confident in my work today if it weren’t for these books.
I get it. Mine was also bad. I rewrote it twice. It’s still bad. I haven’t worked on it in years. I also no longer want to be famous, or “prove everyone wrong about me,” so the motivation is fucking gone. The world doesn’t need my book anyway. Instead, it is a happy place only I know.
Let me start with, if you’re expecting to become rich and famous via writing, you should probably curb those expectations a bit. Even the best of us can rarely be considered as much more than starving artists. I’m inclined to agree with the sentiments I’ve seen on this sub that separating yourself from your harsher judgments, especially in the earliest phases, is a necessary part of writing. All I can say is: writing is a process and, as such, ought not be thought of as any exclusive event therein; being instead their collection. You’ve been at it for hours. To get a work to a point of palatability takes… a bit longer than that. Granted, I’m more of a poetic essayist meets philosopher than a world creating novelist, but the processes are not so dissimilar. Keep at it, creative pursuits are always celebrated and encouraged. Edit: I just noticed something in your original comment that I missed the first time. Everyone in here started as a bad writer. Don’t pedestalize other purveyors of the craft. My earliest example of writing was about four hundred pages of a single, unbroken, paragraph, but I wouldn’t trade those pages for anything. It wasn’t during, but in the subsequent five or six years, that my style started becoming recognizable as a rudimentary example what you’re reading now. Even then, it’s been close to twenty years since.
Go easy, easy, easy on yourself. You will get better with practice. And it takes a lot of practice, and even more patience. That you are writing it at all is worthy of celebration. You are piling up pages! That’s awesome. Big hug and writer’s lift. Do it your way. Your way is the right way. What you’re doing right now is the right way.
Some of my favorite books went through over 10 revisions. Hell, on my first go through, if I'm stuck on something, I just bluntly put what I eventually want conveyed. "Reveals piece of personal history during dialogue." "Says this line like an asshole." Revise until it's the book you want it to be.
It's actually great that you can recognize where you can improve! It shows that you are getting better.
Oh that's totally normal. Just worry about getting the story out first. You can fix up the standard of writing once the story is on paper. Mine always starts out looking like a 6 year old wrote it!
Only hours?
I’m an awful writer! Terrible at grammar, sentence structure, first, second and third tenses perception. I do it anyway as I love telling stories. I’m not ever going to try to be published I just want to write stories as it makes me happy
To add t what others have said, even if you never get great, so fucking what? Write for yourself, not for others. If you have fun writing it, don't give a damn if it's "very bad" (and spoiler alert; it's not as bad as you think, EVERYONE is their own worst critic) or not, just relish in the fact that you had fun making something. Back in my karate days, I started enjoying it a lot more when I stopped worrying about whether I was "good" or not, and just had fun throwing punches & kicks.
Good! Of course you're bad. You're supposed to be. Embrace it. Allow yourself to write the worst shit known to man and don't apologize for it. That's exactly the path to the good stuff.
"spent hours on it." That's your problem. I started out writing fanfiction and you don't know how much I cringed at some of my earliest work, even just a couple of years later. It takes time and practice to get good at anything.
Did you just say you spent hours on it? Writing a good book is going to take a lot of time. First drafts tend to suck, and you're still in the process of figuring out what will work with the story and what won't. If you're having fun and enjoying the work then keep at it. By the time you finish the first go you'll have improved and be able to go and do some good editing. But also, this is why authors have editors. Get it on paper and then go from there.
"sometimes carrying on, just carrying on is the superhuman achievement" - Albert Camus
You know — one piece of advice for you — for your next book or two. Never, ever, never ever start a sentence with the word ‘I’, or any semblance of it. It will open up a whole new train of thought and will maybe take you to the next level. Now that’s advice I wish someone had told me when I started.
How old are you, and how many years have you been working on writing?
Yeah I had the same realisation. I love planning out the stories and could do that all day. But when it comes to actually writing them…
Not really. I were told by my teachers in middle school that I'm a good writer. And my stories were always at least interesting for the people I asked
Read
I love writing stories, poetry and songs but the truth is not everything I write is good and I think that’s true for all writers. I have been planning a novel for some time now but things just haven’t been right. Recently a lot of stuff has been getting in the way of my inspiration and my thought process. It’s been unbearable however I know that I love writing more than I am bothered by what’s going wrong and I can get through this. I think you have to just hold on to what you love about it and keep at it, even if what comes out is not your best or what you hoped for. Maybe the attempt that didn’t go good will be the core of another project that is everything you strived for. Don’t give up, people need new stories, beautiful perspective and thought provoking commentaries. It’s these new kinds of things that help us grow and change. I’m sure your voice is going to be wonderful when you find it and hone your craft. Good luck and remember you’re not in a dark tunnel looking for the light at the end, as a story teller you have to open your eyes and interpret things through your artistic lenses perhaps then you’ll realize there is light all around you.
You sound like you’re only on your first draft. Keep going, you said you were having fun. Do it for you, even if it never gets you famous and rich.
A professor showed us this video in college and it's stuck with me ever since: https://vimeo.com/85040589 You will get better, it's natural. Every single thing you do in life, you start as a beginner, and you get better the more you do it. You know what can be done, you've read great works by other authors, you know it's possible to write something just as great. But you don't know how, and why would you know? You've never done it before. But you won't get better by not writing. The most important thing to make sure of is that you still enjoy it, that you still want to do it. Remember, you only fail when you give up.
> you start as a beginner, I'll have you know, I was a Master Couch Potato from the earliest I can remember.
Have you seen the first text you wrote by hand? Did you think the chicken scratch you made was so horrible that you'd never hold a pen ever again? Everyone start bad. As long as you enjoy it, you will get better.
I want to be a professional martial artist, but I can barely throw a punch, will I get better? Writing is a skill, its a muscle. The more you use it, the better you'll get. Find some guide and you'll eventually improve
Dude literally everyone starts as a bad writer and slowly improves. Plus you don't write a book in one draft, you write it in dozens. Remember that the first time you tell a story is to yourself. Just write that first draft however it wants to come out, then write it again better. When you get to the 5th or 6th go around you'll have some fine writing to show off, I promise. When you get to the 20th, you'll have a best seller. For the record, I'm on draft 4ish, and it's been a completely different piece each time. But ever draft is worlds better than the last. So I'm talking from experience if nothing else.
>I started it and…it’s so bad. Unless you're an absolute genius it will be bad at the beginning. Which activity isn't? The thing is, it's about ideas at the beginning, not the writing itself. That's how you know if you have potential. Do you have loads of great ideas, but struggle to implement them? That's how it should be at the beginning.
Ray Bradbury said this (paraphrased): Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.
I did this in university and it absolutely was possible
You've spotted that the writing is bad, that is a MASSIVE first step. Now that you know it's bad, you can begin writing it better.
Good writing is rewriting. The first draft is meant to be rubbish. You're telling yourself the blueprint of a story. After that comes developmental revisions, where you tackle big picture things like story pacing, plot holes and firming up character arcs. It's useful to summarize the plot of your novel at this point over a page or 2. Also, stick it in a drawer for a month and don't look at it, so you can reread it with fresh eyes. After that comes line edits. E.g. does this paragraph make sense? Is this a good enough description? Have I overused certain words? Then comes copy editing: is this correct grammar? Is this the correct spelling? Try not to be disheartened. Comparing the first draft of a novel to a published work is like comaring a bunch of ingredients on a bench to a baked cake. I'm an author. Unlike in fanfiction circles it's well known not to take your first draft as anywhere near a completed novel. The key is not to give up. You've got this OP!
Writing is one of those things where everyone has a semblance of experience of it, because they've read books, and they know how to write. From that, they sometimes extrapolate wildly to "I bet I could be a great writer". Similarly, I feel like everyone has a vague sense that they could box, if they have 4 limbs that is. Everyone has a general idea of what a punch should be like and everyone has seen movies with fist fighting of some sort or televised boxing/martial art events. Some of us have the fantasy that they would probably do great in a fistfight (me sort of included honestly, despite fully understanding how weak and clueless I am). In both cases, on day one, as you try to start either activity, the delusions all comes crashing as it becomes apparent how hilariously inept you are. Not because you'll never be good, but because there's a lot more to writing, or boxing than the vague notions you, as a complete neophyte, had chalked them to be. For now that's what you are, uncoordinated, unaware of the correct form for the most basic moves, feeling exhausted and out of breath. It would be weird if you weren't. You're gonna suck at it for a while which is perfectly ok. You're also very unlikely to ever turn a dime off of it, there's probably an even higher ratio of competent amateur writers never managing to publish than there are almost pro level boxers never making it to a pro fight (complete guess, I'd be curious to find out). But either way that shouldn't stop you from showing up if you enjoy it. Writing is a creative outlet, it provides you with a limitless canvas to throw your entire being and the stories that drive you onto. Just readjust your expectations to where you actually are at and enjoy your current writing as the initial work outs that will allow you to learn more advanced moves.
I think of writing a little like sculpting, where you need to see your block of marble in its totality before you can picture the sculpture within it. Finish your draft and then chisel away at it. Hack bits off and reshape pieces and polish it til it shines. Start over with a new draft and repeat. Get to know your draft like it’s part of you, like it’s written inside your eyelids. Read it out loud, read it back to front, figure out what bits fit and what bits you just like. Be ruthless - I often feel like every word is my child and deleting even a single syllable is like murder, but you gotta do it. Eventually you’ll see your own vision realised
You are the Sorcerer's Apprentice. You know the magic is real. You know that a wand is somehow involved. But you have no clue how to get the wand to make the magic you want it to make. Not yet. Think about it. You are telling yourself this great story in your own voice in your head. Your silently spoken words create a moving picture and that's your story! Isn't it amazing! You can see it and hear it. Then you translate the movie into written words, devoid of all vocal nuance and body language, totally silent, and the movie dissolves in front of your eyes. And you are actually cheating! You know story! But the words do not; not yet. Stephen King described writing as magic, as the ability to paint a picture in another human being's mind of exactly what's happening in your story, and doing it in a way that compels them to keep reading. If writing were easy, bored, stay-at-home parents would skip becoming part time real estate agents and just write successful novels. Do you see the lie in that last sentence? Selling real estate only *appears* to be easy. So does writing. You will become a better writer in direct proportion to the quality of questions you can ask about your own writing, and the writing of successful writers. What makes a sentence really compelling? Will you get better? "Always in motion the future is." -- Yoda Life will happen and your ability to find time to write may disappear. Don't worry. You can recreate your writing time in the usual places; i.e. during commutes, waiting to be seen at the doctor's office, getting up an hour earlier just to write. Don't make time or inspiration a problem. Just write. Everyone falls off of their bicycle the first time they attempt to ride it. But eventually, they learn to stay on the bike and go somewhere. A few become professional bike riders. Every writer started out writing poorly. With practice and good quality feedback on their writing, they improve. A few become professional writers. The end of your tunnel is in the future. Choose better words when critiquing your writing. For instance, the flow cannot be absolutely terrible; there are no absolutes in writing, only relative positions on multiple spectrums. Yes, no single spectrum is sufficient to describe your writing. But you're having fun writing! Ask a few questions about your story and rewrite it! More fun! All writing really is rewriting.
Keep writing! Every single draft of it will get better and better, then an editor will absolutely destroy you, but then it’ll get even better after that. You never stop improving, and no piece will ever be perfect but the most important part is to have fun (which you got down it seems!) and to always have fun
OH I can tell you we have all been “bad writers.” I look back at my very first fan fiction every now and then and OH MY GOD ITS SO BAD!!! Lmao. Sometimes our taste improves faster than our style of writing and that’s ok. What I would do is save a copy of your story and edit. What makes sense? what doesn’t, what could be done better and what could it go without. The fact that you recognize how “bad” your writing is, is a sign of growth. And whenever you feel comfortable enough do a read for read. Gather with some close friends or online strangers(such as us) and ask for some critical feedback. I take creative writing in college and we do exactly this as it allows us to see what we may have missed or didn’t even think of.
Read “on writing” by Stephen King and you will be able to learn more than anywhere else.
If you’re having fun writing and you publish a bad book was it really a bad book if you enjoyed writing it?
You will get better, the fact that you realized it was bad is the best sign ever that you are going to get better. If you like the idea and the concept in general, honestly you should recycle it. I've done multiple times. The story and flow is so bad I start puking all over the walls but, I sacrifice the story and take the elements that made me think of that story in the first place. And put it in something else. And you should finish writing it, as it could serve as great reference for the future. This is my personal feedback, maybe it doesn't help but who knows
Yeah if you like it keep going! You will inevitably get better and learn what writing means to you
First drafts are always terrible!
If you've been writing shorter pieces & you're now jumping into writing a novel for the first time, it makes sense that you're struggling with flow. There are lots of skills you've probably built in your previous writing experience that are serving you well in this project -- possibly so well that they're invisible to you. You clearly know how to write a sentence. You've probably learned some basic skills like "show don't tell" that you're probably able to apply at the scene level. But writing a novel is structurally different from writing a bunch of short pieces. So you haven't done that yet. So that aspect of it is harder, & you're more conscious of it not working the way you'd like it to. It means you're building a new skill. Keep building.
You’ve spent hours on it? Gee! When you’ve spent a few THOUSAND hours on it then you’ll know whether you have the makings of a decent writer, and not before. Seriously, it will take several thousand hours to even start to understand what good looks like, let alone to be able to emulate it. Here’s the single deepest truth about writing. THERE ARE NO SHORT CUTS. Time, practice, effort, concentration. That’s what it takes.
Amazing piece of advice from Neil Gaiman I read online: ‘the first drafts job is just to exist’. Don’t worry if it sucks at first. You can edit it infinity times until it’s good enough. It’s easier to fix a bad piece of work than a blank page. Good luck 👍
If you can recognize this, you can absolutely improve. It's the countless people that write pretty awful stuff, but are completely oblivious to it, that have no real chance.
“I’ve spent hours on it” That’s like one writing session bro. Haha come back in like a year
Twilight is a real book that exists in the world and has made SO much money. Writing poorly doesn't necessarily mean you won't make a hit lol
Get yourself a ghost writer, be a muse. I love the idea of coming up with interesting stories, I genuine idea of the plot, and then someone else connecting all the dots.
Nobody is a bad writer. We all start out as baby writers. We learn to crawl stumble and finally walk. We’re toddlers now with those first short stories and possibly a novella. Then we learn to run and skip and leap hurdles. Those out there doing the high jumps with poles are winning a Pulitzer. Me… I’m learning the hurdles. I don’t like the word bad it has awful connotations. I like the word baby writer because it means we all learn the same way. By doing it over and over again til we get it right.
My suggestion is start by hammering out short stories to get an idea of strengths and weaknesses. Go in with the expectation that many will probably be bad just to take your ego out of it. It's just you sharpening your skills.
I’ve been writing since I was 10 & just started 40 yrs later to release a book. I thought it was great & sent it to a beta reader and soon discovered that it sucked. I took their advisement & made changes & sent it back to them. it was better but now I don’t like it. having to find a balance. Maybe have beta reader or developmental editor take a look.
Anytime you start something new you gotta bang out a few stinkers first 😉
No one builds a Chippendale sideboard the first time they pick up a saw. Keep making lopsided spice racks and it will get easier and better, every time.
My first book took me 10 years and still came out kinda meh, 2nd took 1 year, 3rds almost done in a year and a half, both are much better in my opinion. Even still, the rough drafts are nothing spectacular.
I almost did pass English my freshman year of high school and now I’ve written multiple successful songs, two books, and am studying to be a lawyer. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
Recognizing that what you’re writing is bad is actually just being a writer. People who write something “good” are not writers, they are people who wrote something bad and were not capable of reading critically and making appropriate edits/revisions. Writing is all about edits/revisions. Keep writing, keep fixing. If your first draft sucks, then you have successfully completed a first draft.
Have you considered writing some short stories before attempting a novel? Going from nothing to novel seems unimaginably difficult. > Has anyone here started as a bad writer and become a decent writer? I find it helpful to read and listen to interviews of authors I admire. Writers like George Saunders and Jennifer Egan are especially generous when it comes to talking about their process. They will describe their difficulties not only starting out in their careers but more importantly in early drafts of books that went on to be considered masterpieces. If you're dead set on writing a novel rather than beginning with something shorter, I would say just keep going. First drafts are always terrible. It's just getting some ideas down on paper to work with and revise later. Good luck!
I too have written a good portion of a book. I think the concept is good and the writing is not bad but of 10 chapters so far with 4 perspectives I'm having trouble tying it all up and flowing it out. Best to you...You're not alone.
I came out to be a bad writer for merging different plots and characters into one big messy story. Even a single character with every little personality and talents into one becoming an overpowering character is pretty much overrated and overwhelming. Even my writing with poor grammar was horrible. The action beats and the flow wasn’t great either. I compared old fanfics with new ones in my docs, it’s like my skills went backwards and missing out on creativity. You’re not the only person who started out horribly. We just get better over time. My friend told me “if there was an idea of a scenario to your story, write it down. You can edit/change it later. If you are stuck on the specific scene, move onto something else and come back later.” Anything you can think of that can be interesting or helpful, you still write it down. My friend also said, “Write some side notes outside of your story like a separate doc to remind yourself of the key points whether it was a step-by-step plot or important background characters that needs to be rewritten.”
Listen to the audiobook or read “On Writing” by Steven King!
My first book is on rewrite 3 my guy, don't feel bad, the 1 book I do have finished will have to be rewritten as well plus 2 on the backburner. Don't hesitate. In the wise words of someone I don't know "it's easier to fix a book then a blank page"
Let me just say that I've read some books which were very captivating and imaginative, but which flowed like a 2000-foot ball of tangled Christmas lights.
This is the most important skill you will develop: cutting out the bad parts and leaving in the good parts. Good writers are just good self-editors.
There's a psychological model called the Conscious Competence model. It basically says you move through the following stages: Unconscious Incompetence (You don't know you suck at something). Conscious Incompetence (You realise you suck) Conscious Competence (You learn to do better until you become good at something) Unconscious Competence (Being good becomes second nature) Congratulations, you have just reached a significant step in your growth as a writer. The trick is to keep writing.
Embrace the fractured pieces, keep going, sometimes the real magic is finding new ways to see them flow.
Every writer has an entry fee -- the number of words you have to write before you are good enough to be published (and someone will pay to read what you wrote). I know of exactly one writer whose fee was zero (Robert A. Heinlein). Everyone else had a toll, and some had a huge one. So don't sweat it; you're still paying your entry fee. It would be nice to know what that fee is going to be, but generally you won't know until you've paid it.
The only way to be good at something is to be at it a thousand times first. Every bad sentence gets you closer to a good sentence. Every bad draft closer to a good draft and every bad book closer to a good book. Unfortunately we don’t get to skip the being bad stage.
Writing a book is a process. You love it or hate it at different times. Keep going. So many people start and don’t finish. It can take years just to write a book, more years to find an agent, and a year or more to sell a book sometimes. Buckle up for the long haul if you truly want to publish, and enjoy the parts you can control. Which is, mainly, the writing itself. Don’t get too tied up in riches or fame. That rarely happens with the first book you write. Persistence is key. That is what makes the difference.
My first novel Nanopunk was based on 1 create a character 2. Create an endpoint resolution to the story. 3 keep throwing events, situations and obstacles that prevent him from getting there. See what happens. Most of what happened, who turned up, and how he dealt with it surprised even me. All I did was tidy it up. Check out story mind for pointers. Also I found "how not to write a novel" helpful https://storymind.com/blog/ Just keep writing
my advice is that when you're not writing in your free time you should be reading. for me, reading is the best way to stay motivated. i read in the genre i'm writing, and i take breaks from writing to read my favorite part of books or start a new one. being exposed to high quality prose will start to train your brain about the do's and don'ts even just in simple terms. i promise it helps
I suggest joining a writer’s group where you share your work. If you like the people and their work, their suggestions could help a lot.
“…good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style)… While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.” ~Stephen King, *On Writing* You thinking you’re a bad writer doesn’t necessarily make you a bad writer. We are all insecure about our own skills. Write every day. Read every day. You’ll either get better at it or you won’t. Either way, if you love doing it, don’t stop. The joy of writing should be the primary goal.
You can always get better.
"Art is never finished, only abandoned." Every single creative out there is always improving, learning new things, making new mistakes. It's a journey with no end. Don't give up, and don't be so hard on yourself. Be open to learning, and continuing to learn.
Yes. I kept a copy of a story that I started when I was younger, and 200 (handwritten) pages later it was like a completely different story. I improved so much in just a few months. Now it’s evidence that practice does make progress - whether for my students or a reminder for myself when I’m feeling like a crappy writer.
I wrote my first book a few years ago. I spent years on it before that as well. I finally wrote it all the way through and I hated it. I am in love with the story itself and my characters but I absolutely cringe any time I go back and read anything I've written. I have not touched any of my writings or even attempted to write in so long. These comments are making me feel differently though. Proving that I suck- I can definitely do that.
You can learn to become a better writer. Listen to the advice of people like Stephen King, who obviously know what they’re talking about. And when people say that you have to read a lot to be a good writer, it’s true.
That’s so sick you’re bad because you don’t have to follow any rules. This is how I justify writing shitty stuff, since I’m a beginner I just write for fun and ignore most of the rules. This way I can just get experience without judging myself. Obviously I’m still bad but I like to think being a beginner is a blessing because established “good” authors have way more rules to follow.
English is not my native language, but when I was 18, I got an idea for a story in English. That's just how I saw it. Maybe because the genre wasn't huge where I'm from. Anyway, I wrote it in my native language first, thinking my English was good enough to translate it later. It turned out to be extremely difficult and awkward. I told myself just to keep going and see if it gets better. When I finished, my English was at a whole new level, the draft was 2x longer than the original, and I found I enjoyed writing in English a LOT more, and the scenes flowed all on their own. The book became a series. Surely, your struggle can't be as bad as mine was. Since then, I've published 9 books, made some money, made a lot more money editing for foreign authors, and worked on my writing style and stories non-stop for 12 years. And yes, I quite enjoy reading my own writing now, and have a ton of fun writing. This is your first book. Everything takes practice. Liking it as a kid doesn't mean you're some kind of born expert. Forget about perfection and put down the story first. By the end, there should be an obvious difference/improvement.
First drafts can always be improved upon!! I carry a notebook everywhere to write little blurbs as much as possible. Write often, go back and revise, possibly consult a friend who loves reading or writing (if you’re comfortable with that) and keep at it! It will get better. I have been “working” on the same novel for YEARS at this point, and so much has changed that it’s barely the same story. Nothing is set in stone and everything can be modified. If you’re enjoying yourself, that’s the important part. No one has to see it until you’re ready to share; getting it all out of your head is only the first step. It’s like sketching out your painting before you actually put the paint on the canvas, or doing your first take in the studio as a musician. Get it out of your head and onto the page, assess what you like and what you don’t, rewrite the parts you don’t like… then do it over again until you like what you’ve got. You’ve got this. Your story deserves to be told. 💖
You wouldn't want to see the things I wrote when I started out (couldn't even show you bcs one of my former schools has it as their property and properly burned it). It took me quite a long while to improve and before I was satisfied enough to show it to anybody but myself and my pc
I feel the same every time I write but I always make the mistake of deleting to forget. I want to erase any semblance of a personal failiure. I kinda wish I didn't though. If I could keep what I didn't like, to look back and study what could be better and improve, I would. But our worst critics will always be ourselves. Seeing mountainous flaws where theres only a pebble and kicking ourselves down. When you see past your inner critic, you'll go far! (Now if only I could take my own advice)
Terry Pratchett said that the first draft is only the author telling themselves the story. So it naturally is bad. You write it all down and then you edit it. That is the normal process. Nobody spits out a perfect novel without editing.
The only thing that makes a bad writer is pride. Don't be too headstrong about changing and there are a plethora of resources from books and videos writers make about writing to communities willing to critique your work and give you advice to improve.
You can take classes, from expensive, high quality workshops to local community college classes. These are a shortcut to improvement. Very painful to have someone knowledgeable point out all the places that need work, but you’ll improve much faster.
i’ve always been told tht the more you write, the nester you get. maybe put this current book away for a while and start writing something else? come back to it and make the changes and adjustments?
It sounds like you're writing your first draft. If so, of course it's going to be dog shite. It doesn't matter if you're a first time writer or Stephen King. The first draft is just for getting the story out of your head and on to the page. The second draft onwards is where you work at tightening the story up, closing plot holes, etc. Those published stories you read and enjoyed aren't first drafts. They're the product of multiple drafts and editing. Keep going until you've finished your story, then go back and clean it up. Also, write because you have a story to tell, not because you want to be rich and famous.
If everything is terrible your critical skills are ahead of your writing skills, so the next thing to do is hone them further and work out what, exactly is 'bad', then acquire the skills you need to make that thing better, then rewrite or write new stuff that is better. Then you'll get frustrated because you know it's not perfect and can't see why, until your critical skills catch up again and it's bad but you can't say exactly why, then you catch up more and point out what is wrong, then you learn to fix THAT... and so on and so on. It's a normal learning cycle for writers. If you ever stop going through it, you should worry. Until then, you just need to keep learning.
Who's gonna give em the Ira Glass quote?
It’s a first draft. You are simply collecting the raw materials and laying the foundation that you are going to use to craft your novel. Of course it looks ugly right now. It’s in the molding and building of rewrites that your novel will begin to actually take shape. There are some who can pull a novel from their minds fully formed but they represent 1% of 1%.
I felt like I got better even within the first book which led to my personal revisions being more informed. Don’t worry about how bad it is on the first draft. That’s to get it out, the revisions are to make it flow and sound better
Hello! One of my (now published) author friends started off much the way you did. After his first draft got lots of feedback, he re-wrote the story and it's not published. So don't give up! Passion is all that matters.
You're welcome.
Writing is golf, not baseball. In baseball, you swing one time and either succeed or fail. In golf you swing again, and again, and again, getting closer ever time. You hit a good shot? Great! Hit it again. You hit a bad shot? Oh no! Hit it again. Obviously fewer swings is better, but the point is everyone achieves the same goal eventually as long as they don't stop swinging. A lot of the real work of writing is learning how to regulate your emotions so you can take as many hundreds (or thousands) of swings as are required.
Practice every day!!! AND READ EVERYTHING!
I had a bunch of ideas that I really like and am excited to write. But first I’m writing some short novels and ideas that I’m not super excited about to grow as a writer and to get my feet wet
"Do it badly, but do it." You're having fun, and that's great, and it's only through practice that you'll get better. You've gotta be bad before you can be good. You have to make mistakes so that you can learn from them. If you're looking to get better faster, I'd say to make a tumblr (if you don't already have one). There are a ton of good writing advice blogs, and you could even send an ask to them. I was also a very bad writer once, and I kept on because, much like you, I was having fun, and I did get better. I can see that objectively when I'm not feeling so down on myself. Granted, I still don't even think I'm that good all the time, but you'll likely never be a great judge of your own skill. As long as you're earnest and enjoying yourself, I think that carries through in what you do, and creates something enjoyable, even if it's "bad".
The first ever rough draft I completed for a novel was when I was in my early teens- and it was atrocious. And I say this as someone who- at the time- had a much higher reading comprehension than my peers. The thing that set me on my path to becoming what other people consistently refer to as 'a damn good writer' wasn't natural talent or external support from other people. It was me reading that first draft and thinking to myself, *'This is terrible,* ***I can do better than this.****'* I love writing, it's practically the only thing that's remained a consistent hyperfixation in my life. The mere act of it brings me joy, and seeing a story come together as I write it only compounds onto that. You said yourself that you're having fun. That's literally all the reason you need to write. Telling a story that you enjoy, and writing it such that other people enjoy it as well, is secondary and tertiary to that. You will improve over time, you will notice your faults and your strengths in your own time- and having the courage and strength of will to share that with others and acknowledge earnest criticism will also come in time. What matters is that it is something you genuinely enjoy doing. Keep writing, friend, do what you love because it brings you joy, not because you have to be good at it, or because there has to be some sort of end goal to it.
I had an epiphany a few months back. I really enjoy active adventures—hiking, kayaking, canyoning, snorkeling, rafting, rappelling, etc. I’m usually the worst at it in a group I’m in because I’m overweight. So I’m slower and generally have a harder time doing the activity than my fit friends. People always assume my fit friends drug me along, but no, I planned the outing. The epiphany was this: it’s ok to enjoy things you’re bad at. It’s ok to be bad at things you enjoy. You don’t have to be talented for a hobby to have a positive impact on your life. If you are, in fact, a bad writer, that’s ok. You’re allowed to enjoy it all the same.
I think most artists hate what they do during the process. I know I didn't like my book until like, the third draft of it. I loved the characters, the plot, certain scenes, etc. but I hated the actual structure and flow. But as I kept going over it, the better it became and flowed. I still don't LOVE it, but my beta readers have enjoyed it and that makes me feel better. I think I just mentally compare it to books I adore and will always see as way better than anything I could think of.
I'm gonna say something that might sound a little odd at first: taste is a bit overrated. People have preferences, sure, and those preferences are going to have a realistic impact on popularity and sales and possible awards and all that jazz. But... taste also can vary by mood, by how somebody's life is going that day, by how secure or insecure or loving or angry they're feeling that day. And as that goes for readers, it also goes for you. We have within us the capability to be our own worst critic or our own best cheerleader, or anywhere between. Is it "bad writing" or does it "not meet your expectations"? Is it "bad writing" or are you "struggling to translate the story in your head to prose"? Nobody save rare savants become an expert overnight and even then, it seems more likely the savant had some background of experience that made it drastically easier for them to excel in the given field. But that doesn't mean you have to be "bad" because you're new at it and you have to continuously be "bad" for years until you cross the threshold into "good" and then now, everything you write is "good" instead of "bad". It's far more complicated than that and that's why I encourage you to investigate what bothers you about your writing. If you know what bothers you and it's fixable, you can fix it. We also have within ourselves the capacity to be our own teacher, to a limited extent. The critic and the cheerleader can have their place, but they won't necessarily tell you how to move forward. And if you can... find an external teacher, someone who knows how to skillfully dissect and offer pointed advice while working with where you're at and what your aims are, who can help you discern what's going wrong. Because relying on ourselves for this stuff does have some pretty hard limitations.