So, any of y'all ever look over something you've just written and immediately feel a sense of shame/awkwardness over it? Especially with things tied to emotions you've been feeling. I'm aware it's probably tied to issues with anxiety/self-esteem/perfectionism/etc. Anyway, how do y'all cope with that feeling? What do you usually do about your writing - ex. do you show it to people, do you edit it more, do you get frustrated and give up, etc.? I'm interested in hearing whatever perspectives you might have!

Pretty much all the time. Though to be honest my shame comes from finding OLD pieces of work... I've got a few stories based around heavy emotion and reading back over that I feel like I... just ... Nope not impressed with how I handled things. Lately though I try to stay positive about my works and if something is off or I regret how I handled it, I rework it. Funny enough several re-writes and I feel 10x better about what I did. ...Most of the time. [edit] Sorry I might have just ended up being confusing there. . .

Haha OH no I totally get it. Finding old writing is the worst, but if it's been long enough, sometimes I just end up thinking it's hilarious. God, there's an early 6th grade english class journal assignment where I wrote about how rude it was the other kids on the bus were cussing. Little did I know how little I would give a damn in a few months. That seems like a really healthy attitude to take about it! It's definitely something I'll try to start doing.

for as long as i've been writing, i've felt great (and baseless) embarrassment for anything i create. i think it's just a weird mental block one has to climb, eventually. i never considered it could be tied to anxiety, but that would make a lot of sense, as i have very severe anxiety, and was physically unable to share my writing for several years.

as for how I cope, well... -I think of all the books I've read that were published, that people liked, and that I thought were Absolutely Terrible. if their work can be released and respected, so can yours, especially since it's better than that -every time you notice a mistake is another step in the learning curve. the basis of HEALTHY self-criticism is so you can get even better than you were before. sometimes anxiety and other issues trip it up a bit, but if you let go of the emotional baggage tied to it and view it as just a desire to excel, it helps a bit. -practice makes perfect. even if you write something awful, it's still building you up. if you feel you only write awful things, well then, you're getting the bad out of your system. there's some quote somewhere that I read once and remembered but only in the paraphrase of "you must get a thousand bad words out of you before the good ones start to flow".

Wow, those are really good strategies. I even have copies of books that had obvious typos AND used the wrong names for characters a couple times in the middle of the book. "Every mistake is a step in the learning curve" reframes that idea sooooo well, as does "if you feel you only write awful things, well then, you're getting the bad out of your system." I'm very glad you're able to share your writing now.

thank you!! i am too, and i'm glad i could help. writing is a skill, not a shame

I constantly remind myself that I am my own worst critic. I always feel super awkward about how I write; I wonder if it's repetitive or if it reads too dully or if I'm not explaining myself well. And I do often think about the old stories I wrote when I was 14-15 and wonder if I've lost my creativity along the way. I feel like a lot of what I write now is lifeless or lacks movement like my old (although badly written) works did.

But feedback is actually my motivation to keep writing, and it reminds me that I am better than I think I am. When I sit down and work on a fanfic because I can't get the words to come together for an original fic, I wonder if anyone is going to look twice at that too. But when I start getting comments, even just one person, saying "omg I can't wait to read more!" I have to remind myself that honestly, the only person used to my writing is me! And of course I'm going to find all my insecurities with how I write. People reading my stories let me know to keep going, to keep improving, because they are enjoying what I write. Someone else might not cry when my character dies like I did writing it, but they may feel /something/ after writing it, and all I really hope for is someone else getting a sense of what I feel when I bring my characters to life. I'm always going to be a little ashamed or embarrassed at the idea that it's not good enough anymore, but I don't want to let that stop me from speaking through my books C:

that's the spirit!! Maybe your perspective on creativity is just different now since you have different life experiences. I think now, our individual experiences and perspectives are what we bring to the table, and that influences that liveliness/movement in a different way.

Feedback is always awesome lol. I loveeeee good criticism and suggestions, and it's just amazing when people take a genuine interest in something you've written or even wanna do their own version of it (I write songs and so do some of my friends). Don't ever let that teeny embarrassed feeling stop you, writing is awesome :)

It depends on what I'm writing. Sometimes, yes, absolutely. {Then I generally post them and get good feedback/reviews and then I feel less guilty} I'm trying to hype myself up to call the recovery people about my hard drive, which crashed and has some almost finished stories on it but one of them is an erotic horror.... awkward Other times I'm really proud of how things turn out and how well handled a short is. Recently I had someone who even called a piece of mine "a work of art"!! Also if/when I've made people cry, usually due to illustrating with words hard to voice scenarios or happenings. One of my favorite, and best stories is a short 500 word piece of two characters talking about a shared abusive past.

fanfic 4 eva!

This is pretty much my life, to be honest. I am very hard on myself when I can't come up with the perfect word or if I write a sentence that just doesn't read right.

Honestly, submitting to literary journals has helped me with my fear of being perceived as less-than-perfect--because 99% of the time, I am rejected. But that one time I am accepted, I feel as though I've actually earned it and strive to continue to better myself.

I also just try to read a lot (mostly short fiction and poetry). Seeing great writing at work motivates me to put out my best work.

EVERY SINGLE TIME. Always. No exceptions. If I thought it was good, I just have to give it a few weeks/months and come back to it and then behold, it is trash and I am trash, time to abscond to the shame corner with me for seeing fit to post that online. ... I mean, I'm partially joking when I say that, but there's a grain of seriousness in there, too.

... then the cycle continues, I guess. Write/edit, post, forget about it, re-read when I get the AO3 notifications, bury myself in shame. I've been sitting on last year's Nanowrimo project for ... well, more than a year now because I keep feeling the need to edit and re-edit because, good lord, I am never happy with anything I do after a prolonged period. At the rate this is going, Nanowrimo 2016's offerings will probably face the same dismal end of rotting on my drive forever while I nitpick at it.

As for what I usually do with my writing, since I used to write a lot of fanfiction (particularly for ye olde kink memes on LJ) I just tended to write and edit as I go, post it on the meme, eventually edit some more, de-anon and post it on AO3, and then call it a day. With original stuff I'm somewhat more ... I dunno, judgemental of it because it's like the only reflection I have of my characters? It needs to be perfect. Ugh. But it rarely ever is and I guess I worry a lot about that, especially since someone once anonymously called me out for my purple prose when I was younger, haha. It's hard to shake that paranoia after something like that. I mean, I do realise now that that purple prose was excessive and I'm consciously trying to improve, but it's something that sticks with you, especially when you're anonymously writing fills for anonymous requests and most people on those LJ memes tend to post requests rather than fill them. I do know there are some people who want to read the original stuff and are telling me to stop nitpicking and post it already, but it's hard to shake that feeling of things not being good enough, I suppose.

i've had this happen to me a couple times. mostly when i pick up and continue something i wrote ages ago and only feel like i'm making it worse. or when i feel like i'm not getting my idea across well enough ; - ;

i don't really do anything tbh? i seldom delete something i write so i just save it somewhere else and re-write it until i feel okay with it. i write exclusively because i enjoy it. like i never published anything and don't think i ever will so if i'm starting to get frustrated i just... stop and do something else lol

I only feel shame if I actually don't like what I've came up with, and want to scrap/rework it. And if I do feel shame, normally coming up with a good idea will cheer me out of any funk.

A lot of people have given great advice for coping with this, but I wanted to say that I feel the same. I don't deal very well with feeling embarrassed, so I'm much happier editing other people's writing than writing anything of my own. It feels much less personal that way. The only way I'm really happy with something I've written, if it's been a while since I wrote it, is to look at it as though someone else wrote it. Usually works once the writing isn't fresh, and lets me more objectively edit my own stuff. "Let it sit until it smells," as the saying goes.

I'm pretty much always immediately ashamed or embarrassed with something I write, which is why I hate rereading what I write. I've done NaNo for the past ten years (I was ten and wrote a 62k story about a unicorn princess, fairy goblin, and a human who go on a quest to defeat the evil tyrant gnome. guys, it sounds like a shroom story), and it has really helped me evolve as a writer. One of the key tips I've always gotten from other NaNo writers is to never reread what you wrote while you're writing it: you'll want to delete it all and start over (and that's a nono because you want 50k words by the 30th and if you restart on the 14th then pffft). It's why my most recent NaNo works have been, uh, 354k and 296k (the second was a fanfiction that'll neeeever be published because wow, what the hell was that). You go back and edit when you're finish with the main plot (and sometimes I write out of order because I really hate exposition. I want to write the climax(es) first so I know exactly what I'm trying to build towards) and then you can tear it all apart.

this doesn't make sense, i'm tired, goodbye

late response but mentioned something that might be really helpful for you - refuse to reread anything you're writing until you're done!

I think that's also very applicable to all kinds of writing, tbh. I edit as I write, which is why it takes me so long to finish anything.

God yes. I've got clinical depression and seasonal affective disorder as well as OCD (I get a lot of negative thoughts in my head). I'm 30 now but within the ages of 19 and 23 I was really ill, and what made it worse was that I hardly told anyone. I had a counsellor but even they didn't know the full extent of what I was feeling. I coped through writing. When I looked back at those writings, it made me feel so ashamed. I don't think I realised how ill I was until I stumbled on them. I deleted them. I never want to see them again, ever, and I don't want to go back to that place. I realise I was still very naive back then and that my illnesses were controlling me. Now, I feel like I've got control of them. They will never go away but I can control them and that's good enough for me :)