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.