Are You a Better Writer Now?

There's a guy I follow on YouTube, a writer/editor, whose videos I like because they're relatively short and to the point. I don't enjoy watching an hour-long video from some "expert" who drones on and on while I impatiently tap my fingers, waiting for the "good parts".

Something this guy said in a clip I watched yesterday got me thinking. He's big on trade publishing, but I'll forgive him for that. A lot of his points are still valid. He talked about how long one of his short story collections took to finally be published ~ six years! (There you go; trade publishing truly sucks.) His point was that he wasn't proud of the published work because he'd gotten so much better in those six years, it felt like a different person had written those stories.

I can't remember when I published my first novel; I think somewhere around 2016. It's still out there on Amazon's shelves, buried deep, but it's there. Am I proud of it? Not in the way that matters. I'm proud that I managed to write a full novel, but it's hardly great. If anyone magically found it online and purchased a copy, I'd be embarrassed. I'm not that writer anymore. 

Comparing my writing then to today, it's like two different people. Maybe that's why a lot of people advise trunking a first novel. Except my subsequent two weren't much better. In fact, I did unpublish my second novel finally, because it was so bad. By the time I wrote it, I'd gathered a tiny bit of knowledge about writing, but not enough and not the right kind of knowledge. Everyone said, add a subplot and I took that to heart, adding not one, but two! It was an absolute mess. (P.S. I don't write subplots anymore.)

The progression of my writing went from, "It's easy; just do it" to "Oh, that's what's wrong! Everyone says, do ___". Then it morphed into, "I get it now. Don't do ____."

My problem with instruction of any kind is that I may get the gist of what someone is saying, but without examples I'm still lost. 

Eventually I incorporated advice that worked for me and discarded what didn't. And I kept writing. And writing. While I probably shouldn't have published everything I wrote, writing all those pieces is what made me improve. Regardless of how my current novel turns out in the end, it'll be miles better than my first one.

No, I'm not that writer anymore.