I hate reading my writing after it's been published. Nearly every time I find things I want to change. If I'm forced to read from something of mine that's been published, nearly always I'll have been at it with a red pen before I read, and what I read will be slightly different from what was published.
I have a writing friend who is a far better writer than me, and yet she's had nothing (at least fiction-wise) published. Her stories are never finished and she can't allow herself to submit them until they are. The problem is she's looking for perfection and she's never going to find it. We have to accept our stories will never be perfect, never be finished.
I once read about a writer who wrote a sentence until it was perfect and then went on to the next one. This was how he wrote his books. Then when he was finished with his first draft, it was also his final. No editing needed. I read that but didn't believe a word of it, or if it was true, I accepted that person never finished a single story.
I'm reading Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing by Anne Lamott at the moment. It's a book about writing and being a writer- more clearly it is about surviving being a writer. She says, "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft." She's a big fan of writing a shitty first draft. I am too. Your first draft of any writing should be free and crazy, you should let your mind wander everywhere because in those corners of your mind are little gems, forgotten memories that can often end up being the central core of your story. Only on your edits, the many rounds of edits, do you cut away and find the real story under all of the shitty first draft. But you must have the shitty first draft, and trying to be perfect stops you from achieving that. If you're trying to be perfect then you're stopping yourself from making ...
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