If you’re a writer and you’ve thrown yourself into learning the craft—you’re following writing blogs, reading craft books, attending workshops, listening to podcasts—something is very likely to happen. Armed with newfound knowledge of what makes a piece of writing great, you’ll realize that you'r writing… isn’t.
It may even start to feel like your writing is the worst writing that has ever existed and scare you out of putting down a single new word on a page. You’ll see exactly what you’ve been doing wrong and you may very well not know what to do fix it and that obviously means you’re a terrible writer and just not cut out for this, right
Obviously not.
It’s natural to feel that way when you’ve reached a point where your knowledge surpasses your ability. A secret for you? Your knowledge of craft–any craft–should always surpass your ability. It’s a good thing. You can’t improve if you don’t see how your work is flawed. The fact that you can see those flaws means that you have the ability to improve, and that’s just as important as your current writing skills.
And while you’re improving? It’s okay for your writing to be flawed. You can write a book, know it has flaws, and still be proud of everything you’ve accomplished.
Published books are flawed. Best selling, critically acclaimed books are flawed. Readers love books with flaws, because those flaws tend not to matter as long as the story connects with them.
There are people who complain about all the adverbs Rowling uses for dialog tags in Harry Potter. Consistent use of adverbs in dialogue tags is viewed by many writers as something you should avoid as bad craft. Features in Harry Potter can be used as examples of “bad craft.” People complain about plot holes, Ginny’s character development, and much more. Do those flaws mean the books are poorly crafted? Do they lessen their value to the literary world? To the world at large? Do they stop 99% of readers from enjoying the books? Of course not! Just about everything we love—and not just books, but everything: other people, holidays, cats, websites, cities, whathaveyou—is flawed; that doesn’t stop people from loving.
No book is perfectly crafted. Not a single one. The book you’re writing will never be perfectly crafted. Reading it back, there will always be something you’re not entirely happy with, whether or not you’ve just written the next Harry Potter or Pride and Prejudice or The Great Gatsby.
So what do you do about your flawed books? Well, there’s a four-step strategy that is deceptively simple:
TELL YOUR STORY. DO YOUR BEST. KEEP IMPROVING.
And, most importantly:
BE PROUD OF YOUR WORK—FLAWS AND ALL.
Never let the flaws in your work stop you from writing, or from being proud of what you’ve already written; because I promise you, there is always something in your writing to be proud of, even if it’s just the fact that you wrote.