This is a message I just sent to my beta. And I want all my fellow writers out there to know why this isn’t selfish – it’s essential.
A lot of writblr culture revolves around self-deprecation. I myself have made a lot of posts about drafts, and how the early drafts are “bad,” and the excruciating process of stepping back, seeing all its flaws, and tackling it again and again with another round of edits.
And that is a very important and necessary part of the process.
BUT.
I can tell you, that as I was writing each of those horrible early drafts, I was in love with them. I felt good when I finished them, I felt they were doing the work they needed to move the story forward. It was only a few days later, or in some cases, months, or in terms of full drafts, years later when I reread scenes and realized they didn’t work anymore.
Here’s the thing: You can get floods of memes and fanarts and kudos and comments and reviews and messages and asks, but nobody should love the story as much as you do. Because YOU are the one writing it, it’s YOUR fingers on the keys – not a single one of your readers can make your story take a single step forward. That’s on you.
So I don’t care if you write fluffy oneshots or epic multichapter fics, don’t you for one second berate your own writing or get bogged down comparing it to others’ because it’s “not good enough.” My shitty first drafts of scenes weren’t good enough. But I fucking loved them, I loved the story they were going to tell, and I loved writing them.
LOVE YOUR WRITING. Brag about it, obsess over it, reread the stuff you wrote and congratulate yourself on the amazing work you’ve accomplished. Because at the end of the day, THAT is what will keep you creating and perfecting your art.
