Love what you write? Or hate it?

Published on by julietrobinsonscot

When I started to get back into writing after a long break I did so by doing some short courses. These helped boost my confidence and allowed me to slowly slip back into things.

One tutor gave me some advice, which really had me doubting myself and my writing.

She told me if you like what you write then you aren’t a good writer.

I asked her if she was talking about editing and how we can become attached to what we have written, often not wanting to make changes. But no, that was not what she had meant.

I asked if she meant that writers doubt themselves. Again, not what she had meant.

She explained to me that in order to be a good writer you have to be driven and for her that drive came from hating her work.

I don’t love everything I write. Sometimes you have to write things that don’t rock your story world. But for the most part the stories I try and tell are shaped by things that interest me, characters who I want to spend time with or places and things I love. I simply couldn’t write if I didn’t feel a connection to what I was trying to create, if I didn’t like what I was working on I wouldn’t have any incentive to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard!

As I said she had me doubting things – she is a successful published author, and I am just someone who spins tales when they can. It took me a while to distance myself from the shadow of her advice and remember that we are all different.

I wonder what bad and good advice others have received?

For me the pottery analogy has been perhaps the most helpful thing, I wrote about that previously on this blog.

It helps me to remember that everything you write is practice and experience.

https://wordpress.com/post/a-year-of-time.com/142: Love what you write? Or hate it?
Broken pottery outside my Aunts studio.

22 thoughts on “Love what you write? Or hate it?”

      1. She’s right though, the content usually gets better by editing. Although, when I started editing my book, I ruined it 😀

        Now I only edit blog posts.

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  2. I kinda know what she means; I’ve written things I thought were brilliant which later on I realised weren’t nearly as brilliant as I’d thought. But hating your work? Nah

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  3. I mostly adhere to the advice to just write. Write when you want to, write when you don’t. Write if you like what you’re writing, write if you hate what you are writing. But write write write. Ray Bradbury, I think, said something to that effect. So did Stephen King. I would daresay they they are likely more successful that your unnamed published author.

    I don’t know that the advice you received is the best — it can be self-defeating to think that way. Instead, I think a more neutral position should be taken and less self-judgmental/self-critical. And write.

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    1. I think it was poor advice, especially given how easy it is to pick apart everything we create and if you don’t take joy from the words you put on paper then what is the point?
      Yes, I agree with you the creating is where the we learn, practice may not make perfect, but it is certainly more effective than hating what you write!

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  4. I often get the feeling that a piece of writing can always be improved. Especially poetry. I go back to verses years old and am constantly adding lines to them or deleting them. But I never hate it. And I know when I’ve written a good line. I can be dissatisfied but never a hater.

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    1. I do the same! And sometimes just go ahead and make the changes. Terry Pratchett who I adore went back and rewrote Carpet People, if he can do that then I feel justified in such things!
      Yeah I really don’t get the hating part. It baffled me. She was clearly very complex.

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  5. Wow, Juliet! What a weird comment from a teacher (IMO).

    I feel that my best work flows when I am positively obsessed with my characters and their story. If I hated it, I would not engage. Interestingly, I just wrote two pieces that felt like they wrote themselves. One was that obsessive, loving every minute of it type of thing, the next was just writing almost without engagement, but not entirely (In both cases, I had no idea where the story was going. I just kept writing until it resolved). The latter was the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, in terms of process. Like the characters wrote me. I’ve read it, but I’m still not really sure how it turned out. Both stories exist, anyway, so I’ll be interested to take them into critique. Meanwhile, I can say for sure that I didn’t come anywhere close to hating either of them.

    When I did visual art, on the other hand, I used to hate it. But it wasn’t that good, either. 😉

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    1. I love it when a story takes control! Sometimes you start something and then a character that wasn’t meant to be anything other than a walk on bit part just takes over!
      These two piece you talk about sound amazing, I hope you share them here sometime!
      I did wonder about visual art, I have a few friends who work in that world and often they are so consumed by their work that I couldnt imagine them not loving it. Other times though, normally when working for a commission they don’t have the same passion at all.

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      1. For me, it was all about frustration with my own incompetence. I felt I had the visions, but not the ability or skill necessary to fulfill them as I envisioned. With words, I feel more adequate to the task, and so it’s enjoyable. I need both the obsession with channeling the inspiration and the sense that I’m up to doing it justice.

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  6. I don’t think a writer can really judge his/her own work. Sometimes, the things I dislike are the things other people like, and vice-versa. If she’s talking about editing, then yeah, you have to be willing to “kill your darlings,” as Stephen King says, to improve your writing. But to just make a blanket statement like that seems crazy to me.

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    1. I wonder now if she was trying to reference Anne Enright, who said ‘Only bad writers think that their work is really good’ in her ten rules for writing. Which I understand, maybe she just wasn’t as eloquent.
      I often find the parts of my stories I liked best turn out to be the bits nobody else likes!

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  7. I remember getting back into writing after a few years of not writing at all, and as I was reading my own words I realized that I had improved a lot since the last thing that I had written. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But it was wayyy better than what I used to write because of all of the lessons and experienced I had accumulated during that break. I remember being so happy reading my own words and liking them. Hating what I wrote is what started that break in the first place, so it doesn’t work for me either. There are no absolutes, everyone has their own truth.

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      1. I had another break after that first one, but I think now I am back for good. Once a writer, always a writer, that’s how I see things. I am trying to not pressure myself anymore, it’s a slow process, but I start to feel more comfortable with it.

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