First of all, I’m officially on my summer break now! Huzzah! I can’t believe that I’ve already completed an entire year of school. Only one more semester to go…
You know how sometimes you get told certain things over and over again that after a while, they lose their impact? But then one day, it hits you like a train and you rediscover this particular fact/advice all over again like it’s the first time? (I feel like there must be a word for this feeling in the English dictionary…I just don’t know it. If there is, please enlighten me.)
I’ve read plenty of online articles and author opinions over the years that mention how all writing is never wasted. Even bad writing. Because you can learn something from every piece that you write.
But for some reason, this idea popped into my head last night and I’ve been mulling it over ever since. Maybe because I’ve been reflecting about these past few months? (Does anyone else think back to what they’ve learned after a semester of school? No? What about the kind of people that you met while meeting in the same room multiple times in a week? Anyone?)
At any rate, I thought back to the stories (and poems) that I wrote this past semester and there are few of them where I scratch my head and wonder, “Why did I write that? That’s not a good reflection of the work I can do.” But at that time, I must have, because I wouldn’t have turned it in as an assignment otherwise.
It made me wonder about what I saw in those pieces. What was it that made me cringe? It’s usually different for each work, so I can’t make a sweeping statement about them for you, but it’s interesting to think about.
And I definitely have to get better at not feeling embarrassed about my “bad” pieces.
Because, yeah, you can argue about what is considered “good” writing and you can point out story inconsistencies and grammatical errors and the list goes on and on. (The trick is to just have as little amount of faults as possible. Yes, all first drafts are pretty terrible. But some written work is more likely to be published than others. Why am I getting ANIMAL FARM flashbacks??)
However, I believe that there is a nugget of goodness in all writing. The act of writing takes work and there’s a part of your soul that you inserted into the piece that made it yours. And that is beautiful.
This doesn’t simply apply to writing. Basically any craft can have this viewpoint.
I’m trying to remind myself that, no matter what I write, I make beautiful things. I have something to learn with even the stories I would rather lock inside my laptop forever.
So my advice: Make something beautiful!
