I' m not . Some of the stories I thought were winners, took time to place. And others, ones I thought were weak, did not.
Some of the stories I got the most positive feedback about, I almost didn't send out.
For instance THE PERFECT DAY, which several people cited as a favorite story of last year recently seemed too tame to count as a crime story.
I wondered if people would have the patience to spend the day with this family. If they could wait around to see what the problem was.
Does this happen to you? Are you a good judge of your own work? If you had to name the best thing you've written, would the rest of us agree?
9 comments:
I can usually judge my own writing pretty well. But I need to put it aside for a day or two and then come back at it. Freshly written stuff always seems great to me. But after a day or two, I can see the warts in my writing.
No. The things I think are terrible are the things that most people like, that more people talk about. Usually, the stuff that I'm pleased with, the stories I feel really confident on, are the ones that just seem to fizzle.
Time has a way with it, doesn't it?
I think I'm a pretty good judge of my own work. Not perfect of course. Readers and members of my writing group do pick up stuff that helps me. But generally I think I'm an ok judge.
No. Stuff I thought was weak, others have loved and vice versa.
This also means I am not able to figure out, beyond the incredible obvious, why something I submitted "is not what we are looking for at this time."
Patti - Interesting question! I'm an OK judge of my work, but certainly not as accurate as I'd like. I actually am very glad for my beta readers for that reason. They always see things more clearly than I do.
No, apparently not. Well, when it comes to serious novels, it seems I can predict the readers´ reactions fairly well, but my humour is sometimes too far out. That is what made me publish a story on Amazon this summer, only to take it down again when I´d achieved three 1-star reviews for it (and they were the ONLY reviews).
And last year when I published my one and only ghost story, I had no idea that so many readers would love it.
So this is another area I need beta-readers for - to tell me what works and what doesn´t.
For years,I've dismissed my early novels as apprentice work. But now, as I format them for electronic publication, I am amazed at how good most of them are. I was being much too critical.
Some writers seem to master it immediately.
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