What is soemthing you get pissed off at when you read your old works?

[MakBow]

Not....a single.....line break...
I want to choke myself right now.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Not having the hardware to read the 5.5 or 3.25" disks its saved no (nor the software to open it)...

 

[Th3Breadnought]

My ellipses addiction was indefensible.

It is now defensible enough to be couched in terms of stylistic choice.

That's true to me, and to some of the people I tell.

 

[JHarp]

I wouldn't say pissed off. I'm not mad just disappointed.

I think I relied a bit heavier on actions around dialogue, characters actively doing things while talking and the whole exchanges between them.
Might have been part of my earlier ADHD or something, but my scenes couldn't sit still and just talk at times.

I also know it took me like 5 months back then to be happy with my direction for writing back then since I didn't have anything near the files and structure I do now with the different applications I use.

I'm surprised how coherent things were back when I started posting things online back at the end of 2018 though, I thought I started off a lot worse out the gate.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

The really old work? Bold of you to assume I actually look at that.
Hell nah, do you want me to go back to my crippling depression phase?

 

[Jerynboe]

I’m a deranged maniac who can’t help but smile when I read my old work despite its objectively lower quality just because I’m still proud that I actually wrote something at least vaguely competent on my first try. My biggest disappointment is the same disappointment I always feel as a pantser: all the plot threads I introduce that never actually get properly followed up on because I was making it up as I go.

Someday I’ll write something from start to finish and release it as an actual properly planned and executed book.

 

[MakBow]

The really old work? Bold of you to assume I actually look at that.
Hell nah, do you want me to go back to my crippling depression phase?

Yes

 

[Eldoria]

New writers often write according to their own desires and ignore the reading experience. I'm not surprised by your giant paragraphs.

Some writers also write so poetically that readers don't even know what they're talking about.

Well, the writing of new writers can actually be an interesting narrative study.

Furthermore, I also see my older work as an opportunity to improve my narrative skills by rewriting older chapters, even though this can be quite tedious.

 

[Arakun10809]

Well, it would have to be reading a previous draft of a story I am working on that felt like generic, isekai garbage instead of something interesting. Also, I felt like it was going straight into Millennial writing. That draft was so bad I threw it down to the lowest circle of Hell itself (which is in my archive folder awaiting me to open untold horrors upon the world).

 

[BigBadBoi]

Not....a single.....line break...
I want to choke myself right now.

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I can't read this shit bro and based on the second image I don't think I want to

 

[MasterY001]

Not knowing the end goal of my stories. I'd put over 6 months into a story with a cool concept and end up dropping it because I had no idea how my stories would end and how the characters will progress. So, the tone and plot would jump around and what may start as a fun harem romp would end up as a cynical analysis of American hypocrisy.

As for style, I used to feel a constant urge to indicate who was speaking and how, as if readers would never be able to figure it out on their own.

 

[phloebotomy]

Not....a single.....line break...
I want to choke myself right now.

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I mean, it worked for Gabriel García Márquez!

I don't have a lot of fics on here, but I did write a lot of overdramatic works in high school. Though honestly, my mastery of language might have been better then.

Well, at least I'm writing again now!

 

[Arakun10809]

But I will personally ask about what was originally posted...
WHAT IN GOD'S GREEN EARTH IS THAT?!

 

[TinaMigarlo]

--- I wasn't addicted to periods of ellipsis. I freaking freebased ellipsis. When you see what i call my "older editing style", IE waiting on my modern editing standards. You are *not* seeing the level of ellipsis I am referring to, though you might well think so. It was that bad. What I call my standard of editing now, all but eliminates the ellipsis. (and I miss them)
---I still allow myself to do *this* for informal posting. I did this a *lot*. i did it *way* too much. (I was addicted to CAPITAL spelling, as well)
---I had a serious case of "comma-itis". I had a case of abusing exclamation points to show emphasis!
--- I put the kibosh on emphasis "quotations" as well.
(I still do many of these things in my informal posting. I'm not line editing my posts, life's too short)

you put all these together, it made for an editing nightmare. i've since exerted more and more control over these things over time, in my rough drafts

---the final piece of my editing puzzle, is still being edited out of my older works. until I stop writing and edit millions of words, you will see parenthetical questions and answers as a normal speech pattern. Example:

If you don't know what I mean? I'll show you. I'll make it my business? To convince you this was no small matter.
It wasn't a big problem? It was a huge monumental one.

I first edited it out of my prose; I had no idea it was just as deadly in dialogue. So when i say you're reading mostly my rough drafts, you are. I'm embarrassed as all holy hell that I have a work just over a million words going up release by release, and it still needs the remnants and last vestiges of these editing cures removed.

I'm not waiting a year or two to online publish a single word, to go through millions of words of text to introduce these things. I'll work on them as I go. Every single thing I discover tomorrow or next week? Would then require another year to fix everything, no way in hell.

I've been "waiting" for a couple/several years. I'm done waiting. Sh!t needs to get shoveled out the door, so I can see which story, if any, shows any signs of working. Curiously, one is showing signs of something resembling working. I'm not talking splash-page "trending" naturally. I mean, any looks and readers at all. Because if I wait until its "ready", the time will never come, there will always be something else that needs "fixed".

If i'd of done this ten years ago, I'd probably already be where I want to be. I'll finish off with a quote I like:
"The best time to attack an enemy was yesterday; the second best time, is today."

 

[JordanIda]

That Mom, my teachers, and my besties told me the trash was good.

 

[lizzyrose]

Sometimes I reread my old work and wonder why I even started it…
and other times I’m just sitting there like—why didn’t I finish it?

 

[NotaNuffian]

I abided to the whole "one paragraph for one person in a scene" thing and managed to make a ten sentences monster because I just had to describe all the minute shit on the person.

 

[TinaMigarlo]

That Mom, my teachers, and my besties told me the trash was good.

those bastards.
lol.