Learning to See and Fix the Flaws in your Writing Without Hating Yourself

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master,” is one of the most true things ever said about writing. But while true, far too many of us think too little of our writing. We believe that because we’re not a master, we can’t be excellent writers. Or that we are being disingenuous when we promote our work.

In my experience, there is no group of people more susceptible to imposer syndrome than writers. Whether amateur or professional many of us are far too harsh on ourselves and while I can only speak of myself it difficult for me to share my work or encourage people to read it because even something is good I have spent almost the entire time I was working on it focused on its flaw.

And, as a writer, it’s vital for me to see those flaws. Starting from the minor such as grammar and typos to more major things like characters, plots, pacing, descriptions, etc., the only way to improve as a writer is to see the flaws and weakness in your writing and try to improve them.

But if anything is to be published, you have to stop fixing those flaws. Aside from grammar and typos (possibly) it is impossible to create anything without flaws. And not just because we need to improve as writers, but because of the nature of stories. Every story is a balancing act. Add more description and you slow down the pacing, focus on character and you have less time for plot. Fix a grammar error and you create typos. (That last one may just be me.)

So what is the answer? How do you move past the self-flagellation and accept both that you can create work that isn’t perfect and still believe it is damn good? Is it even possible?

The first and most important step is change your focus. Instead of making yourself feel bad because there are flaws, take a moment to remember how much you’ve improved. Those things you see as major flaws in your writing have been there the whole time, but you’ve finally gotten good enough to see and work to fix them. And it is likely this story is better than anything you wrote a year ago, and that was better than something you wrote two years ago, and because you’re actively trying to improve the next thing you write will be better than this.

Which leads into the next most important step. Moving on. One reason that many writers find it difficult both to see the improvement in their writing and grow increasingly incontinent with the story they are working on is that they spend too long with the same story. I’m not saying to abandon work or rush through it. A novel requires drafts and even rewrites. The problem is when people fall in love with a story and become monogamous. Going through endless drafts in search of perfection. Rewriting large sections to fix one insignificant flaw. The focus on filling in even tiny gap and inconsistency until you’re remaking Beauty and the Beast so you can explain that the beast wasn’t 11 when he was cursed. (That’s really why they remade it. It had nothing to do with money.) Move on and write something better.

Third, is to learn to understand the different types of criticism both from yourself and others. This is easier to see in others, but you can fall into them too. There is the reasonable, useful and timely criticism. This is what should come from your beta readers, critiquing partners and yourself when you’re looking at a story that hasn’t been finished. Things like, I’m not sure I understand this, or did you mean this along with you might want to tell people where this is happening and your characters all sound the same.

The second is a reasonable criticism that’s not useful or timely. This is often difficult to recognize from the others. But the easiest way to tell is if you’re holding a published copy of the book in your hand when you see it then it’s probably not timely and if you can’t change it without completely changing the story you want to tell then it’s probably not useful.

One example of this in a recent story was someone asking why the police let the protagonist go when they suspected that he murdered someone. It was a reasonable question, and one that I made very minor adjustments to the dialog to help fix. But the reason he let him go was because the plot had to happen. Sometimes that’s just the way books work. There are also many examples of reasonable criticism that aren’t timely. For example, one review of the first book I wrote says that the story doesn’t have enough detail, and it sometimes feels like reading the cliff notes. It’s entirely right, but as I wrote the book ten years ago, going back and rewriting it entirely to add in detail, while satisfying, would not be a good use of my time.

There is another type of criticism that is the most problematic, especially when it comes from ourselves. That is the non constructive criticism. Things like, well this writing sucks, or the person who wrote this must have been a ____________ (Fill in the blank with something no one should want to be) are not useful. (At least not for your writing. If everyone who reads your writing suggests you’re ________ you may want to consider whether they might be right.) For example, suggesting that an early 20th century weird fiction writer may have been just a tad racist for having his main character more scared by finding out that someone in his ancestry may have been African than from being chased around a creepy old mansion by the severed head of a gorgon head isn’t really that useful for fixing the story. On the other hand, fixing that may have been useful for said writer. (There is no saving Medusa’s Coil except perhaps reading it the same way you might watch The Room.)

So what is the solution for dealing with nonconstructive criticism? When other people do it it’s actually fairly simple but not easy. You remind yourself that not everything is written for everyone. Assume the person is a terrible human being, avoid ever seeing them again and move on like the reasonable person you are. The problem is that if the person telling you that the writing sucks and the person who wrote it should throw delete everything and cut off his hand so he can’t inflict his writing on anyone in the future is yourself; it becomes more difficult. The first step is to take a step back and remind yourself that you aren’t your writing. And that not everything you write has to be good. Then take a break from that and write something else while considering something fairly simple. If someone talked to a friend of yours the way you’re talking to yourself would you be OK with it? If the answer is no (and it’s probably no) then perhaps you should consider not doing that to yourself.

Finally, go find something terrible to read. I suggest Medusa’s Coil. If it doesn’t make you feel better about your own writing, then you can at least be glad you’re not that racist. If you’re not interested in reading Lovecraft, there is plenty of other terrible writing.

There is no simple solution for shutting down your internal critic. I wish there was. The problem is that we need him. We’ve all seen people who have shut down that voice too well. The self-satisfied dick who is convinced that what he writes is the greatest thing ever and that anyone who doesn’t love it just isn’t smart enough to understand it. But he doesn’t have to be running the show. Give him a pleasant room he can wait in while you’re working on other things and then let him out when it’s time to edit. Hopefully, a bit of quiet time will make him nicer and at least you only have to listen to him when it is useful. Then write a few dozen more stories and show them to a few hundred more people because if nothing else it will help you build up some scar tissue.