Something I enjoyed during my high school years, writing short stories (sorries), I've lately been trying to pick it up again. Now, it always seems to end the same, 10, 20, even 40 pages and I read it and decide I don't like it. Delete key. To explain, I'm trying to keep it somewhat biographical, but not restricted to reality either. Problem being, my teen years were anything but happy. Mean, drunken old man. (No, not me, HIM!) Dad had his favorite, and needless to say, not me. I'd like to keep a little of that, but don't want to sound "poor me", because I'm not that way. However, when trying to deal with it in writing, it goes to the opposite extreme, and what was on the HD soon ceases to exist. Just wondering how many others do this? Rich

You're not alone. I wrote like a mad woman in high school and college. Then it's become very sporatic. A few years ago I managed to write a couple of novels but they aren't very good. I'm back in a slump now. I can't seem to get my rhythm back. I don't, however, delete anything, because I realize what seems terrible to me when I'm in a slump may seem not so bad when I'm feeling better about things. I made the huge mistake of destroying all my writings when I was a teenager and I regret it very much now...I would have like to reread them now. I think the main thing is to decide if this is something you really want to do, and, if it is, make time for it, find a support group, and make it a regular part of your day. Don't evaluate. Don't delete. Just write persistently. Then find someone you trust to read it and you may be surprised to find it isn't as bad as you thought (we are often our own worst critics). I think that's the difference between a real writer and a want-a-be (I'm the latter). And don't heistitate to come on the forum and talk about what you're going through. It's a great place for a safe vent. :)

I didn't lose all my HS stuff, but wasn't really all that unhappy to see the smoke coming from the burning barrel. ;^)) Different settings, at that time I was working in the woods with our landlord's son, and a lot of real characters. Think I started that when I was fourteen, and it gave me a lot of things to write about, most of which have faded so far I'd hate to try to bring them back. The years between about 16 and 25 seem to be the most interesting, but as the old oriental curse, "May you live in interesting times", not always something one wants to dwell on. Some things, like the landlord's son backing up the Cat, over our chainsaw, and dropping a big fir, on top of the Jeep, might be interesting. (Landlord's dog, Snuffy, was in the Jeep at the time, took three hours to get him to come out from under the porch.) Sometimes run into the same with music, I can drop into the depths of hell, but have to work like mad to get back out. Oh well. Rich

Yes. And no. Yes I have, as have most other writers, written reams of stuff that I absolutely hated when I read it with a clearer head. No, I never throw anything away. In that I agree with dialyn completely. No matter how bad, it's all grist for the mill. I still find kernels of merit in some of my worst blabberings. The stories as written my never see the light of day, but they just might shine a light on an idea worth developing. A painful past may not be pleasant to revisit but one of the fundamentals of a good story is adversity and the resolution of conflict. It's just a matter of finding the right balance so that the story remains vital without becoming maudlin. I can relate to the fir tree story. I used to work for a park department. I was the helper for the most incompetent tree man I ever knew. He nearly killed himself or me on many occasions. One time he dropped a dead elm tree on top of a garage in the backyard of a house next to the park. The owner was not amused. jon

I never throw anything away. I not only have everything I wrote in highschool, but I have everything I wrote in Jr. High as well, pretty much. I even started dumping my "first" story onto my webpage, spelling errors and all. (This would be the first story I tried to write down on paper for the sake of writing down on paper that was not a school assignment, and was not a retelling of someone else's story. I was about eleven at the time.) Although I haven't got very far with it, I rather enjoy typing it up. It's nice to see all the problems I don't have anymore. :) But I know lots and lots and lots and lots of writers that seem to do exactly what you are doing. They write, they think it stinks and they delete it. This is known in the trade as having an overactive internal editor. (I, on the other hand, have a disfunctional internal editor, opposite end of the scale problem.) There are ways of tricking your internal editor into turning itself off. Try repeating to yourself, whichever of the following mantras best fits your motivations. #1 - I am simply writing as a form of therapy. Keeping this stuff for a year so I can read it again after time has passed is part of that therapy. #2 - This is just a practise novel I am writing so that I can practise doing endings. In order to practise endings, I don't have to write a GOOD novel, I just have to GET to the END. #3 - Experts say you need to write a million words of drek before you can start writing the good stuff. This short story will be drek words 101500 to 104000. #4 - It doesn't matter if it stinks because I can always submitt it under an assumed name. If none of these fit, try making up your own. Other techniques that are supposed to help are: Typing with your screen turned off. If you can't see what your typing, you can't know that it stinks. (Really good for people who can't ever finish anything because they keep seeing all the errors they made in the stuff they just finished typing and so they go back and twiddle, and twiddle some more....) Using an outrageous font in some strange color (Megenta Uethi Gothic, Yes!), so that your editor is clued into the fact that this is "NOT to be taken SERIOUSLY" Set yourself high wordage quotas, and really, really try and achieve them. (If you still have this problem next November try joining the National Novel Writing Month challenge. dialyn usually helpfully posts a link.) The idea is to force yourself to write so fast that of course it's drek. Doesn't matter. Don't have to write good, just have to get words. Write longhand. It takes more effort to destroy hand written pages than it does to simply fail to save a wordprocessing file. People with overactive internal editors are frequently surprised at how not horrible what they wrote, assuring themselves it was horrible drek all the while, actually ended up being when they came back to it after a suitable cooling period. Personally, I need a cooling period in order to see anything wrong with my stuff. :(

Well, the second, (and least favored) son of an alcoholic has plenty to write about, but not much that is really interesting unless you lean towards the masochistic. Through my sixteenth year, not much good happened, and a lot of pain and "eternal downer". At the end of that year, one other entered my sphere of existance, and almost complete reversal for a while, then another three or four years of the eternal downer. People that the old man once held up to me "You should be more like XXXXX" that reached their graves floating in alcohol ten or more years ago, I'd like to bring some of them in, but don't want to cover more than a five year timeline. More unusual events that happened, but most wouldn't believe them. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, which is why most of the truth is wrapped in fiction to disguise it. Doesn't make me wonder if I did indeed write this drivel, or if it happened, but why am I writing it and why did it happen. Oh well, back to see what I did yesterday, maybe I'll keep one paragraph. Although, I'm just as likely to scrap it and try to rewrite it in the third person, see if that comes out better. Rich

You may not like the entire thing, but I'm sure you'll find parts you like if you try to read it from an impartial point of view. (Yes, it's not easy!) Grab a middle section, treat that as a completely separate piece, and see what happens if you use that as your begining, or as your ending, or as the entire story. You may find that there's a section that shines, and your story will unfold from that piece once it has been freed. Experts say you need to write a million words of drek before you can start writing the good stuff. This short story will be drek words 101500 to 104000. I've seen variations on that, but I really do like this version the best!

millman, what you write may possibly be drek. Or Crescent points out, it may not be. But if even if it is drek, most writers find it possible to improve what has been written after the fact, in a little process known as revision. If you don't keep what you write, you don't give yourself a chance to fix it. Save that stuff. Come back to it later and look at it again. I don't see how it can hurt, and you may surprise yourself. Because you have endured really horrible stuff, you have a great capacity to deliver hope to other people in similar situations. There doesn't seem to be many things as helpful to people undergoing great and ongoing trials, as knowing that someone else has seen troubles equally horrible, and survived. What you are writing may seem terribly depressing and whiny to you, but it probably isn't anywhere near as useless as you seem to think.

Trying different things now, instead of taking twenty pages to build the final character, thinking that flashback would be a better and less depressing way to do it. It's a strange period for me, one I'm more than happy it's over, and parts of it I wish had never ended. Think it's called "Life". Rich

they always say bad times make for good writing..;) of course, you've had some adventures (def-bad things happening to other people far away..;), and writing can help. I've done some off-an-on writing over the years..I'm good at coming up with the idea, but the follow-through..;)
I like the idea of being a writer more than the actual work of being one; but then I'm the same way about art..;) I'm amazed at all the folks who romanticize the teen years, I was miserable too..only I still remember it..well some of it..;)

Don't have any problem with follow through, if I was a cartoonist, I'd be what they call a "rivet man". (Every rivet on the biggest locomotive ever built would be drawn, to scale, and in the right places.) That can make for some incredibly boring text. Maybe later I'll post something to see how fast it gets chewed like an old dog bone. (Probably deserve it too.) Rich