Do you hate your writing?

[Ran08]

Hate is such a strong word. =) I personally think it's amazing to see how much we've grown over the years, just through looking at our old works. =)

Sometimes, when I look back at my past works, (especially the pre-highschool ones) I feel really silly, haha, but that's it. Even though English is technically not my mother tongue, I've known it since I was a baby kid since my parents spoke to me in this language. I first learned to write in English, actually, not in my mother tongue. Still, it wasn't until my preteen years that I actually became concerned with grammar and stuff (and even now, I still have a lot of problems with my grammar!) My old writings never fail to put smile on my face though they're not very good, since they remind me of how important writing is in my life.

Until now, my writing is still constantly changing... and for the better, I'd like to think. =) I've still got a whole lot of things to learn (like coming up with better ideas and writing with better grammar haha) and I think nothing can help me "learn" writing better than... actual writing. ^^ It's all just practice, practice, practice.

So... having said that, how can I possibly hate something that's such a huge part of me? Haha.

[DCH]

I did when I was younger, but things changed as I grew older.

I will say something that many on this board will not want to hear: young writers are underdeveloped, by and large. And by young I mean fourteen to twenty four years of age. I want to emphasize that this is actually a good thing-- it means that if you keep with it, you are going to get better and better as you age. This is an advantage that writing has over athleticism which peaks early and falls off rapidly.

In the field of writing, young is considered your late 20s to age 40.

Part of the reason young adult writers tend to look back at their work and look down on it is because of how rapidly they improve. Most people learn how to write at around age six-- but it isn't really writing. It's copying sentences and learning functional communication until around age ten or so. From then on, children start learning real writing as they start reading more complex stories. At age fourteen or so, teenagers start to actually start much more creatively. From the time I was fourteen to the time I was eighteen my writing enormously changed. From the time I was eighteen to the time I was twenty four, my writing changed once again. At thirty, I feel like I have grown in depth and sophistication and I could capture feelings, moods, and ideas that would have been more difficult to describe when I was younger.

If you look at someone like Stephen King, most of his writing prior to age twenty five is not very noteworthy. His first real piece that represents him as a writer was made when he was twenty five (Carrie). From there on he wrote most of the books that he became known for and his style developed.

So I think at a younger age, you tend to change so much that you will look back, and you will see writing that is way inferior to what you are currently capable of-- and that gap between the past and the present can make you feel like you were some incorrigible idiot. But if you feel that way, it means you have improved tremendously. I no longer look back and feel it, the things I wrote four years ago are just slightly less nuanced-- and some of the raw parts are actually fun to read.

So keep writing, you'll keep getting better, and eventually you will look back and you will see more of the present you in the past.

[Starshine]

I suppose it depends on how you go on about writing, you can look from many points of view. You can base your writing using the basic template, which i class as "story-telling" or you can write from several different view points. If you keep at something you learn, i wouldn't say i hate my writing in general, although sometimes we write something and it just doesn't turn out how you'd hoped, but you can quickly learn from your mistakes, what annoys me about writing? The typos....

[Caveat Lector]

A lot of our early writing is crap, and that's not a bad thing! The fact is, you need to start SOMEWHERE. You need that release for your passion before you learn how to properly craft your passion. You need to be willing to make mistakes before you can get better. It's how you learn and grow. And as you learn, your writing style gradually changes throughout the years, too. I mostly look back on my old stories and laugh at them rather than outright disdain them. The ones I wrote in my mid-teen years (counting fanfic here) were somewhat better, but still clunky and needed improvement by leaps and bounds. Perhaps ten years from now, I'll view my current writing style similarily.

[Kokoro Hane]

Yeah, some of my older work I cringe at. I've been writing for a long time...can't remember when I started, but I've written full on novels and when I look back I am like....huh? Why did I love this so much? But more or less the writing and how I wasn't that good at conveying certain scenes like I thought, but I admittedly still love my old characters. I always felt character-creation and dialogue to be my strong point; narrative, on the other hand....I have definitely grown over the years, both for third and first person narrative. Then when I went into VNs...oh man some of my early works I cringe, why did I think it was awesome? But oddly, SOME of my older ones I am still proud of, the ones that are incomplete and I want to finish someday.