The Publish Cringe

[Queenfisher]

A disorder I just made up.

I accidentally copy-pasted my last chapter twice and didn't notice until someone told me . Which made me realize I have an Already-Published Cringe Disorder where I can't look at my own writing without cringing HARD once it's published.

(Heck, I can read it just fine moments before but as soon as it's already posted... something clicks in my brain about it and I immediately hate it).

It's like shuddering when you hear your own voice on a recording, or when certain actors (Adam Driver, I hear?) who cannot bear to watch themselves on screen. I never read my published stories in magazines and books either. It just torpedoes me straight into NOPE, NEVER IN MY LIFE. Now add SH to that list.

I know I'll have to fix my chapters for typos or weird wording one day but so far it makes me too much to even imagine.

Do any of you also have it or a version of it? Can you build tolerance for it?

 

[Sii]

I agree with the published part. I don't even go back and read my stuff once I publish it. I just make sure I have everything as properly edited as possible before it goes live. Then I'll just throw it out there and kind of forget about it on purpose.

It doesn't make me cringe so much as I just treat it like a condom, I've used it and have no reason to look at it again.

 

[A.P.R.L.]

I get what you say about hearing your own voice in audio, and I also get the same feeling seeing myself in video, but as for writing... not really, nope. In fact, I usually prefer reading my texts in a published site than in my drafts. But I guess that's because sometimes when I'm re-reading online I tend to forget I was the one who wrote it

I think you can get used to it. Sometimes when I need to present a video for work I brace for it, telling myself "the sooner you're done with it, the sooner you won't have to look at it again" but then if I see it over and over because there's still many things I need to edit, I grow desensitized to it. I think something similar might happen with your published writing.

 

[DDTStudios]

I’m scared every time I post a chapter since I do it without changing anything. Then I yell Hail Mary and call it a day. A few hours later I’m reading my own text and go, “shit there are plot holes. Oh welp.” And I never look at it again, until a good month later.

 

[binarysoap]

Well you can always preview as draft before publishing, so at least you would be able to catch the accidentally copy pasting twice stuff. Unless viewing a draft also counts as "published" to you, in which case, never mind.

 

[DDTStudios]

Well you can always preview as draft before publishing, so at least you would be able to catch the accidentally copy pasting twice stuff. Unless viewing a draft also counts as "published" to you, in which case, never mind.

The problem lies in my laziness.

 

[Leti]

No, thanks. I like the sounds of my voice. Besides, traumatizing people is what I did all the time. If seeing my text make people cringe, then it's working as intended. Not everyone has the same definition of "cringe", though.

 

[DubstheDuke]

I've accepted the fact that at the end of the day, I am not a published author.

I am a webnovel writer.

What does this really mean?
It's not the case that I don't work hard on my writing. I do. I put a lot of thought into a lot of things in my stories, and I do my best to make it interesting- especially so for myself.

However, I am not under the constant pressure of editors to make my story perfect or even amazing. I write what I write because it's fun, not because I'm trying to create some sort of classic that gets talked about for years to come.

At the end of the day, no matter how unprofessional my writing is, or how many quirks there are which some people will look at and say 'Oh that would never be allowed in a published story', those are my own quirks! And even if they wouldn't be allowed in a published story, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad.

Of course, there is no excuse for laziness- I am not referring to things like being lazy or inconsistent or whatever. But, when it comes to doing things my own way, regardless of how others view it.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

I felt that way at first, but I got over it with time. Same with hearing my own voice. It bothered me more when I was younger.

 

[yansusustories]

I only have that when I look at really old texts from, like, six years ago. I do know I've come a very long way since then and could do it a lot better but I always get that short moment of "Maybe I should have waited a year or two more before publishing ...". Then again, as soon as I have that thought, I think back to how everything played out after publishing my first story and realize that if I had waited a year or two more (because most of it was reliant on that first publication), I would never be where I am today so the cringe is gone in a moment.
Since I did switch languages (and genres) since then I'm thinking of rewriting some of my old stuff (I did actually start with one story) just for the heck of it. Having the comparison between the old version and the new one is also really helpful in getting over what I feel was lacking back then because I see that I can do it much better by now. And just imagining how awesome even worse stories (I tried one from "only" three years ago so it wasn't as bad) could turn out if I rewrote them completely, I'm actually getting really giddy and want to sit down and do it immediately

On the other hand though, what really makes me cringe (even after the fact) are stupid mistakes that aren't even in the text itself. Like, I remember the time when I published a book and ... wrote down the wrong author name for the shop's metadata The worst thing was that I was unable to change it for several hours before it finally got public. And then I had to wait until the change went live. Honestly, those were the most panicked hours of my whole author's life Even now, I really want to facepalm at myself and my stupidity or just go somewhere and hide. Luckily, nobody else seems to have seen so it wasn't as bad as it could have been

Edit: The voice thing was really bad at the beginning, btw, but since I can't type for extended periods of time and need to dictate my texts, I just had to get used to it. It's still not something I like but it has gotten less bad.

 

[Queenfisher]

Ah, I am not alone, what a relief. My trauma is shared by so many other authors, yay.

@binarysoap, I should do that, absolutely. Only... I don't. Like DDTStudios said, lazy. But mostly because I edit two times right before getting the text pasted into the SH editor, and by that point, I already have a kind of blindness/overstimulation with the text. It all just looks like a wall of letters after so many close rereads. @_@.


@yansusustories, thanks for telling! I feel you for the embarrassing mistakes so much! I once sent a whole bunch of query letters with the most ridiculous typo IN the query body. Ugh, it's still making me shudder.

Personally, I am not that many years into writing, so I can't say how my texts look like from so far ago as 6 years. My advantage would be that almost nobody saw my first year writing attempts other than my workshop for assignments, so I am spared to have to reread stuff that's too old! It's never even published anywhere, so I can just pretend it never existed. If I want to fix a story idea from my first writing year, I'd rather rewrite it from scratch because... ugh, my English was atrocious back then. It's really not worth rereading and attempting to fix that disaster.

Oh, and your English writing is so lovely, by the way! Many ESLs here are very inspiring, too and even teach me some new lexicon every day ^^.

I kinda have the opposite issue with reading some of my not-so-old stuff and getting inspired to edit it. I tend to hate what I currently write so much that when I reread it after a while, my expectations drop ridiculously low. And because of this, I always end up pleasantly surprised with my own writing. Oh, I end up ecstatic that it's not literal shit which I, for some reason, believed it was. Which is super annoying because I understand it stops me from growing and improving in case my writing isn't really that good and I am not able to tell (it's not shit, of course, but not necessarily a gem either). Low confidence in my skill is probably the entire issue behind my Published-Cringe as well. Sigh.

But hey, at least this thread shows I'm not completely alone in this .

Thanks, everyone!

 

[yansusustories]

Oh, and your English writing is so lovely, by the way! Many ESLs here are very inspiring, too and even teach me some new lexicon every day ^^

Aw, thank you! To be honest, it was super hard in the beginning (I only switched in early 2018) and I'm currently rewriting parts of my first web novel because of that as well. Which is actually turning out really interesting. I even had a reader start out with the original version and later read the new version and then comment with their opinion on it which told me it was the right thing to do. I'm also much happier with it now.
I think one big takeaway for me from the whole rewrite is/was:
It's actually not that much of a problem not to be perfect. I had a problem with that in my native language because my standards were ridiculously high and every single typo I missed or comma made me shake my head at myself because I knew I should know better and not make stupid mistakes. But guess what? Nobody ever complained about the first version when I started out writing in English so ... I guess I beat myself up without reason all these years. This has helped me calm down a lot and go at writing with a much more chilled attitude.
Second, it has shown me just how much progress you can make in a rather short amount of time. Like, two years aren't that much and I know for a fact that I had several big problem areas I needed to work on (trouble with past tenses because we hardly distinguish those in my native language - prepositions since they're also vastly different in my native language - punctuation since we use a fucking ton of commas in my native language while English ... yeah, not so much - flow). By now, prepositions are hardly a problem for me. I get them wrong sometimes, especially when I'm tired but I often catch those mistakes myself or when Grammarly has to show me, I know what preposition it should be immediately. My punctuation also isn't perfect but not as ridiculously wrong as in the beginning and I feel like the flow has gotten pretty good. Actually, the flow was probably the thing that I managed to get the hang of the earliest after I stopped translating and just wrote for a while. (I think I mentioned that to you in another thread once already?) Tenses are still a bit of a problem but I know I'd just need to sit down and learn to get it. I just don't have the time right now

I kinda have the opposite issue with reading some of my not-so-old stuff and getting inspired to edit it. I tend to hate what I currently write so much that when I reread it after a while, my expectations drop ridiculously low. And because of this, I always end up pleasantly surprised with my own writing. Oh, I end up ecstatic that it's not literal shit which I, for some reason, believed it was. Which is super annoying because I understand it stops me from growing and improving in case my writing isn't really that good and I am not able to tell (it's not shit, of course, but not necessarily a gem either). Low confidence in my skill is probably the entire issue behind my Published-Cringe as well. Sigh.

Uh-uh, the inner critic! Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo and/or tried it? When I took part the first time, that really helped me to get past that problem. Before that, I always wanted everything to be as perfect as can get on the first draft and took a lot of time. Then when I tried NaNo, I managed to get past that thought back because the atmosphere of writing with thousands of other authors was just so motivating that I just focused on getting it done. It's definitely something for everyone (I personally love statistics so being able to jot down a word count each day is fucking heaven to me ) but I felt it helped me a lot and might be worth at least a try if you have the problem as well. Or maybe you could try something similar at least or adopt some of the challenges they usually do?

Also, when it comes to growing, I felt that getting some specific literature on editing really benefitted me. Like, the ones that will showcase actual excerpts of manuscripts and then go through it and show what they feel isn't as good as it could be and give alternatives. It gives a bit of a guideline on what to look out for in your own writing and with also delivering possible solutions, you're not completely left alone in how to deal with that.
Naturally, that type of thing should also always be taken with a grain of salt. Like, I remember one of those books (was in my native language though) harping on the address "Master" which would apparently remind everyone of Star Wars and thus shouldn't be used. They instead suggested another one which ... was very reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings

*ahem* Yeah, sorry for the wall of text again. I just become super passionate when it's about writing

 

[AliceShiki]

When I look at past stuff I wrote I cringe at how bad I was, but... I have no problems with looking at what I just published, really. I like re-reading it even.

 

[Sophine]

I had a weird thing happen today. Normally I'm very unhappy with the things I write, but yesterday I was looking back through a couple of chapters to see if I could find a piece of information. It was almost like I'd forgotten that it was me that wrote it and I was beginning to admire the flow of the text. I quickly snapped out of it, but yeah, that was weird.

 

[Queenfisher]

My punctuation also isn't perfect but not as ridiculously wrong as in the beginning and I feel like the flow has gotten pretty good. Actually, the flow was probably the thing that I managed to get the hang of the earliest after I stopped translating and just wrote for a while.

My punctuation sucks still... I thought I've gotten it right before, but with Grammarly, I realized that I have no idea how to properly decide whether there should be a comma with "and" and "but" in many situations and whether there shouldn't be one. Obviously, I only mean compound sentence structures, not the bare listing of items in a sentence. Compound sentences will destroy me one day.

I wonder what you mean by flow. As in "flow in writing" or the "flow in the story"? Because the flow in writing I only get when I just force myself to commit to a page for an hour or so. Not inspiration, not excitement, not even knowing what exactly I want to write helps me attain this flow as well as brute force of figuratively chaining myself to my writing desk.
As regarding the "story flow" or the "language flow" -- . I understand that it might be different from "pacing" but really - I have no idea how to manage either. I feel like my natural cadence of thought/speech is best for writing something I consider flowy (because smooth cadence of writing likely translates to smooth reading experience of the overall story), but I also understand that my personal idea of flowy will not align with other people's. Then again, I have no idea how to fake a different one, so I don't even bother.

Uh-uh, the inner critic! Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo and/or tried it?

I haven't, but I like I told you somewhere else -- I am a bit of an anti-social freakozoid . Mustering the courage to participate in big events takes a lot of time for me. And NaNoWriMo seems like exactly the thing that would give me so much anxiety, I wouldn't be able to write at first at all. Just how I am. Even registering here and participating in the contest gives me the shudders most of the time when I remember it has a SOCIAL side to it all! (This forum gives me anxiety as well, btw, but I'm learning to move past that ^^).

But in general, I think I can get into the "writing zone" when nothing distracts me from telling a story, even my Self-Critic. It's only when I finish writing that I look at what I wrote and cringe and think it's complete crap. But by that moment, I've already written something, so it's not a big deal to think it's bad if it's behind you ^^. Where it really annoys me is in the rereads and edits: preparing myself to read what I think is crap sets my expectations too low so that in the end, I cannot tell good writing from bad writing. Anything that's not "explicit crap" -- seems like a masterpiece to me. How to grow out of it -- I have no idea, but I suspect it teaches me to settle on whatever I've written (even if I'm not in the mood and am really just grinding for w/c) rather than to try and improve.

Also, when it comes to growing, I felt that getting some specific literature on editing really benefitted me.

AH! Please share some titles! Because I am browsing a lot of editing and writing manuals, but I feel like many of them aren't that helpful to me and most recommendations for them are so impersonal and vague that it's hard to tell what you will get inside.

*ahem* Yeah, sorry for the wall of text again. I just become super passionate when it's about writing

I love walls of text. As you know, I am a wall-of-text graphomaniac myself. But then I lurked through this very forum and saw that most people don't enjoy this so I prefer not to post at all lest I unleash my text walls onto people again. So happy I'm not the only one like that!! Oh, and talking about writing is the only thing I love more than talking about reading ^^. I never mind either (I research these topics for my essays, too!). So please don't apologize to me!



*****

HO-HO! Look at that! People who are traumatized by their own writing are in the tiny majority in the poll ^^. Ahhh, tfw you meet your tribe for the first time...

 

[yansusustories]

I wonder what you mean by flow. As in "flow in writing" or the "flow in the story"?

Mn, I mostly meant the flow of the language in the sentences. Like, the flow of writing itself is something I don't have much of a problem with as long as I had enough sleep (which I mostly don't these days, lol) and don't get distracted. Surprisingly enough, I write best while cooking xD Language-wise, I was just pretty reliant on my native language at first mostly because I was really insecure about my English skills. For me, it just helped to continue and get past the idea that I'm super bad.

I haven't, but I like I told you somewhere else -- I am a bit of an anti-social freakozoid

Same, tbh When I did NaNo for the first time, I didn't even register on their website and just did it for me. But I guess if you only have the problem after that, then it's not really a solution either

AH! Please share some titles!

Haha, I'll look through my books later to see which ones I really thought were good

So happy I'm not the only one like that!! Oh, and talking about writing is the only thing I love more than talking about reading ^^

I feel like there are actually lots of us around here

 

[yansusustories]

Haha, I'll look through my books later to see which ones I really thought were good

So, I did look through them and had to realize that most (and some of the best) of them were in my native language I looked up whether there were English translations of them out there but, unfortunately, there aren't

From the pitiful rest that's left, one that I would definitely recommend would be "Revision and Self-Editing for Publication" by James Scott Bell. It has sections to different parts of the revision and editing process like characters, plot, dialogue, showing/telling, voice and style, or descriptions. It's structured very well (as in, it's easy to find specific stuff or work on just one thing if you want to) and has examples and exercises.
The same author has several shorter books about specific parts on editing. For example, I have "Dazzling Dialogue" at home. Just like the other one, it has quite a few examples and points out some important stuff. On the downside though: It's barely over 100 pages and I found the examples not that great. So while I definitely recommend the first one, I'm a bit reluctant about this one. I feel like you might as well look at some websites/watch some movies and would likely get the same out of it but it can be a valuable starting point.
James Scott Bell does have several other shorter publications about editing (basically, for almost every point that's mentioned in the first book, there is a small book focusing on only that point). I do like his writing style so I guess at least having a look to see if they're something for you is a good idea.

 

[mostlyharmfulll]

I would feel like something is missing without this "Oh crap!"-feeling whenever I hit 'publish'.

 

[BenJepheneT]

I usually don't care. I might cringe a little bit at a mistake or two but it really doesn't bother me at all once I scroll past it.