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Happy With Your Current Skills

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
I know it's good to always try to improve more and more in your writing, but is there ever a point when you have said, "I'm actually happy with where I'm at now."

I feel like stylistically (perhaps that ever elusive "voice") I'm pretty happy with where I am. When it comes to cohesiveness, character development, and actual craft though, I still have a way to go. Editing is getting me closer and closer and is in fact the only way I see myself personally growing. Writing a hundred first drafts is a dubious distinction I don't want.

I don't think you ever have to be completely happy with your current skills, but at least be content with them. I feel like there's a fine line between "ready for publication" and "greatest thing I've ever written." I know everyone wants to make a good first impression, but how can you make that first impression if you're never satisfied with where you're at as a writer?

A conundrum for sure.

My feeling is that if you can read through your work and:

a. Say "I wrote this?"
b. Laugh
c. Cry a little at the sad parts (or the insanely funny parts)
d. Excitedly think "I have to show this to someone."
e. Work furiously to get it polished to see the light of day
f. Sigh then say "It's finished."

...then you may just be closer to where you want to be than you think.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Yes, I'm always trying to get better, and I always try to find stories that push the limits of my skill. But one thing I'm happy about is that I've learned when to accept that a story is done, at least for the foreseeable future. There's a certain point where I know that I can't make the story any better and anything else I do to it is just shifting deck chairs around, or worse, drilling holes through the hull.

Another area I'm happy about is confidence. Not to say I'm soooo awesome, but I'm confident I can complete any story I set out to write, and though that story may be flawed, it will be readable, and won't make someone's eyes bleed. I'm confident that no matter how many times I fail, I'll get better.
 
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Malik

Auror
I'm finally there. It only took 20 years of working on the same idea and 30 years of writing -- something -- every day.

And then there are days when I read something and realize that, by comparison, I suck.
 
A few weeks before I was forced out of the game design major because of my terrible grades, I completed programming from start to finish on a role-playing game. It was something of a razor apple, putting cute and childlike protagonists face-to-face with the bloody sins of the previous generation. After I left the major, I didn't touch it again until my computer died and I discovered my backups were faulty--the program looked perfect, and all the code seemed intact, but it simply wouldn't run.

Today, I accidentally reopened the folder it was contained in, and out of curiosity, I took another look through the code I'd written. I checked graphics, music, dialogue, even the lines that played when you cast spells. I can't speak for the gameplay--maybe it was all garbage to play. But to my amazement, the world I'd created, and the characters I'd put in it, were good. Really good.

When I look at scenes I've just written, I know they could be better, and I know there will come a time when I'll know exactly what I should have done to make them better. When I look at scenes I wrote a long time ago, sometimes I recognize that they're rubbish. But if the story I wrote was true to the emotions I felt, I still feel a connection when I read it, and I think other people would be able to connect to their own experiences of the same emotions.
 
Hi,

I don't really think well or poorly of my skills. I don't think of them at all if the truth be told. I think about what I've written and what I'm writing, and I apply my satisfaction or lack thereof to that. I know I'm a better writer than I was. But I don't know of it because of the meta-analysis of what I'm writing and how. I know it by reading what I've written and thinking - "I would rewrite that this way."

And I don't think there will ever come a point where I could say of anything I've written that I would not rewrite it slightly differently.

Cheers, Greg.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I'm quite happy with my technical skills. I've found a voice I like, which flows nicely and is easy to read. I'm good with descriptions and feelings.
I'm just not all that good at telling stories.

I think I've got the little details of how to write easily readable text down, but I still have quite a way to go when it comes to filling that text with meaning.
 
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