Writing Mistakes (My WORST Fiction Writing Mistakes!)
Transcript:
This year I’m trying to take more risks and try new things with my writing, so today I thought it might be fun to tell you about my most humiliating writing mistakes.
I know I come across as a very open and optimistic person, but I am not that kind to myself.
I am a ruthless self-critic.
My biggest problem when it comes to finishing a book is silencing the voice in my head that claims it’s all worthless every time I open up software to type. If I’m going to actually follow through on my effort to try new things and improve, I have to actually learn to trust myself.
A good first step to that is admitting my mistakes, no matter how embarrassing.
The one that I’d claim as my biggest embarrassment happened during one of my best writing accomplishments.
As a teenager, I once wrote an entire 16,000 word short story in under four days. I’m really proud of that accomplishment and that story, but for all the pride I have of that moment, it’s also the time I forgot to catch a murderer.
That story was pretty well plotted, though obviously not enough.
It was an adventure survival story, with a main plot of a romance that was never meant to be. Along with the danger of the world they were stranded in and the ticking clock on their love, there was also a murderer just randomly killing people in their sleep.
My characters weren’t too worried about him, partially because they were doing shady things themselves, but there was still a stalker taunting them and killing their friends every night.
On a list of priorities, I would have ranked unmasking him pretty high.
I had research material to reference the entire time and almost everything else about this story fell into place perfectly. I ended it in a satisfying place at the end of my four day write-a-thon and shared it online.
My friends loved it, I moved on to my next work, grew up and forgot about it. Until I rediscovered it transferring computers years later and reread it for the first time in five years.
It was still good! I was really proud of myself while reading it.
“This killer subplot is really good,” I thought. “I wonder who that ended up being.”
I played myself.
I wrote an interesting mystery that I NEVER solved and I ended up the victim.
I have no idea who the killer was now, only that I know I knew when I wrote the story.
To be fair, the unmasking of the killer was not required to close up the main plot, but I know that never mentioning him again was not the original plan. It wasn’t an intentional decision. I just forgot.
Out of all my embarrassing writing mistakes, forgetting to catch a serial killer is probably the worst.
The only other mistake that humiliates me as much as that one is more an example of teenage ridiculousness than anything else.
This story is a series of terrible decisions and to this day my heart clenches in pain at the memory of their combined stupidity.
When I was fifteen, I was somehow led to believe that you didn’t need to finish a book before querying it. This is not true.
I knew then that this was not true because I religiously read querying and publishing blogs, so I don’t know why I convinced myself of this idea after probably reading it once on some scam agent website.
Anyway, that’s the start of this whole debacle.
I wrote up a query/summary for a book that was not only not done, but one I hadn’t even started writing yet! It was all polished and nice and I printed it out as a flyer, with the other side being a coloring page-esqe drawing of a girl looking out a window surrounded by flowers and hearts.
Hand-drawn.
The drawing had NOTHING to do with the story and it was the exact opposite of the professional cool I was aiming to achieve with my unfinished book flyer.
I then passed out these flyers to EVERYONE I KNEW.
My family, my friends and neighbors, my teachers, my classmates.
The only people I didn’t send this to was actual agents, thank god.
Thinking on this now, that leads me to believe that deep down I knew I was being completely ridiculous and while I was willing to risk my reputation, I was not willing to risk my future career. That's my only saving grace.
Most people were really nice about it. I somehow thought this was going to help my author platform, so I was very invested in this and kept telling everyone my plans to be published and a hot shot and all that.
My favorite teacher liked it and only had one comment.
I had a typo.
I had spent days slaving over this beforehand and I have always been a grammar freak. Among my friends there was a warning to anyone trying out creative writing not to give their unpolished drafts to me because “Lily is a total grammar freak. She will take your soul and she will stomp on it.”
I was not kind.
Writing had always been the thing I’d been better at than my peers.
I used to be a soccer girl, but I shattered my leg in middle school and spent several months in a wheelchair, crutches, and physical therapy.
After that, I spent a lot more time online than outside and started writing fan fiction. The positive feedback from that spurred me to take writing more seriously and in that process I slowly realized that throughout my report cards, my skills in English had always been something my teachers singled out.
I couldn’t really be as active as I used to be, so to find out I still had a talent—and I’d had it all along—that meant the world to me.
A lot of my identity in high school was wrapped around my confidence in my writing.
I hadn’t really faced rejection yet.
So to be told by my favorite teacher that there was a mistake in something I’d spent days poring over and had already shared with dozens of people, that was like a death kneel.
She hadn’t pointed out what the typo was, so I sat there for a minute or so trying to figure out what I could have done wrong. I came up with nothing, but instead of asking her to point it out, I said, “Oh, I have a LOT of typos.”
And then my face froze in horror and I literally started at the wall for fifteen minutes.
She looked at me with a very confused face and said, “Okay…” and I swear my mind went numb for the rest of the day.
It’s not even that bad of a moment.
One hundred percent of my humiliation is tied up in having based my entire self worth at the time in the quality of my writing, which I DO NOT recommend, as well my reputation for being a grammar freak.
It’s really inconsequential, but when I think about that I'm just as humiliated as if I’d been pantsed in the cafeteria.
Aren’t we glad I didn’t actually query agents then?
The rejections I’d have received would have ruined me. The typo was mistaking defiantly for definitely, in case you were wondering.
Technically, I didn’t spell either word wrong, I’d just confused them. I have grown a lot since then.
Obviously, I have somehow gone from obnoxious overconfidence in my writing to at times crippling self doubt. That’s progress, in a way. Anyway, I'm not perfect and neither is my writing.
The message I'm trying to get across today is not to tie all your hopes up in a single story. If you want writing to be your career, you have to examine it with a long term perspective.
No matter how embarrassing your mistakes are now, they really won't matter five or ten years from now.
And any critique from family or friends really pales in comparison to actual structure problems.
If you're going to focus on the humiliation of something, put your effort towards something that can be fixed or improved in the future.
I'd much rather be a laughingstock among my friends than publish something with glaring plot problems. Be kind to yourself.
I promise that you are your own worst critic.
Learn to laugh at yourself and you'll find it much easier to face your mistakes.
Tell me about an embarrassing writing mistake you've made in the comments below.
Thank you for watching. See you soon. Bye.
