I'm not really looking for any direct advice, perhaps just the opportunity to share experiences with others.
I have been a fanfic writer since I was about 11. I remember my first fanfic on the pokemasters website, so poorly written it would make one cringe just to look at it. No originality, no real plot, just the usual 'trainer fic' that was probably less than 100 words long and barely one paragraph (I even remember the line "Yay I caught a rattata!". No joke). The criticism I got for it sparked an urge to improve.
Ok, so I wrote more and more since then, though very little actually got posted online. However I was constantly criticising my own work, and I constantly hated what I wrote. That's probably why it never got very far. Around age 14-ish I got into Dragonball Z, and started to try some fanfics at that. Although I had improved vastly, they still failed harder than the pokemon ones I was producing around that time. So I let those die quick.
I began to write an original story around age 15. I had so many characters, the setting, the technology, etc planned out to such detail that my folder was bulging. As I got older though, I felt that the whole thing was stupid. I spend a good couple of years on it so I never trashed it, but will probably never continue it either.
Some of my 'older' pokemon fanfics started to take more mature twists. I seemed to enjoy adding a bit of realism to my fanfics. Death and injury were a possibility in pokemon battling. Sometimes not only the pokemon battled, but the humans too. There were pokemon abusers and pokemon saviours. Things that would happen in real life if pokemon were around. But still my characters were poorly developed, and even today I have a poor understanding of how certain aspects of society work, so my fics still had a very juvenile flavour that even younger writers lack in their works. Even today this is a problem.
I can't seem to refine my skills, and perhaps it's because I've been too shy to post up what I have for feedback. Perhaps also, it's because I don't even enjoy reading that much, nor do I watch television. Eh, I don't even know why I'm posting this. I guess I'm desperate to hear other similar situations, or situations that leave some writers with the same bitter taste of failure lingering on their tongues.
I have been a fanfic writer since I was about 11. I remember my first fanfic on the pokemasters website, so poorly written it would make one cringe just to look at it. No originality, no real plot, just the usual 'trainer fic' that was probably less than 100 words long and barely one paragraph (I even remember the line "Yay I caught a rattata!". No joke). The criticism I got for it sparked an urge to improve.
Ok, so I wrote more and more since then, though very little actually got posted online. However I was constantly criticising my own work, and I constantly hated what I wrote. That's probably why it never got very far. Around age 14-ish I got into Dragonball Z, and started to try some fanfics at that. Although I had improved vastly, they still failed harder than the pokemon ones I was producing around that time. So I let those die quick.
I began to write an original story around age 15. I had so many characters, the setting, the technology, etc planned out to such detail that my folder was bulging. As I got older though, I felt that the whole thing was stupid. I spend a good couple of years on it so I never trashed it, but will probably never continue it either.
Some of my 'older' pokemon fanfics started to take more mature twists. I seemed to enjoy adding a bit of realism to my fanfics. Death and injury were a possibility in pokemon battling. Sometimes not only the pokemon battled, but the humans too. There were pokemon abusers and pokemon saviours. Things that would happen in real life if pokemon were around. But still my characters were poorly developed, and even today I have a poor understanding of how certain aspects of society work, so my fics still had a very juvenile flavour that even younger writers lack in their works. Even today this is a problem.
I can't seem to refine my skills, and perhaps it's because I've been too shy to post up what I have for feedback. Perhaps also, it's because I don't even enjoy reading that much, nor do I watch television. Eh, I don't even know why I'm posting this. I guess I'm desperate to hear other similar situations, or situations that leave some writers with the same bitter taste of failure lingering on their tongues.
