Can You Survive Your Own Bad Writing?

I read a Substack post a while ago that hit home for me. Titled, "Why Bad Work is Necessary", it makes the case that you need the gumption to weather your own bad work. 

In the writing sphere, a newbie really needs to hone their survival skills, at least I did. You gotta love a new writer's confidence. When I was writing my very first manuscript, there were times when I said to myself, "This is really good!" Nothing could have been further from the truth. I refuse to even read that novel today.

The article writer is absolutely correct; we don't like hearing it, though, especially when we're impatient to "get going". I mean, we're impatient to become published authors, or in some cases, impatient to land an agent (same thing, just two different routes to get there). I shopped my first novel, but my first clue should have been that I couldn't even come up with an interesting query letter. The story did have a point, but it took the slow train to get to it.

If you're a perfectionist, well, you'll continue to disappoint yourself; but aside from that, you may be tempted to give up. I might have given up, if not for the fact that I simply liked writing. Little did I know that, story after story, I was sharpening my writing skills. If I was to read my published books in order (which I won't do) I could trace my progression. It might not go in a true straight line; I still fumbled from time to time. But that had more to do with a thin plot than it did how well or poorly I wrote it. 

I don't consider myself a slow learner. With most things, I catch on quickly. But writing, like any other creative form, doesn't automatically get better just because you finally "get it". You have to put that into practice. And practice and practice. It takes a while to reach the point where you say, "Oh, I know what to do next. And what not to do next." I had to accept killing my darlings, and it hurts every time. I had to force myself to remove whole blocks of text because they didn't fit. 

My "quick" learning took about eight years of steady writing. 

In the end, it was all worth it.