My Least Favorite Part of Writing

Eight years ago, give or take, I wrote a short story called "Invitation to Eden" and I posted it on FictionPress.com under what I thought was going to be my penname. I received several constructively critical reviews, and I saved them. I even had it beta-read once. I like the story. Well, I like the premise and some of the imagery and I like the ending and I like the idea of the characters. The story itself needs work.

I want to put some shorts up on the website to offer a sample of my writing for potential readers. So I thought, hey, why not this story? It's a fairly decent example of my fantasy writing. So I pulled it up and started working on it.

Last night, I ended up scrapping over half of the story, changing the backstory, action-drafting the parts I scrapped, and changing the dialogue considerably. I got so frustrated with it.

This is my least favorite part of writing. It's the part where I look at whatever I've written and I hate it with every fiber of my being. I want to destroy it, bury it, and deny all knowledge of the fact that it ever existed.

It isn't just "Invitation to Eden," either. I went through this with Strawberry Moon for a while. I've gone through this with every piece I've ever written. At one point, it's always not good enough, doesn't make sense, is awkward, is uncomfortable, is boring, is stupid. I know that I'm not alone in this. Every writer I've ever talked to for any length of time has expressed feeling like this. It's nice to know I'm not alone, and it's nice to know that once I'm over it and the story is finished that it will--most likely--be well-received (most of my work has been in the past), but that doesn't change how awful it feels when I'm here. This really is my least favorite part of the writing process.