I feel like this is just going to turn into a stream of consciousness type of thing...
I've been writing a really long time. Before I started writing fan fiction, in 2005/06ish, I'd been writing original stuff. But I guess my fan fics used to be pretty popular on FanWorks, and I was really proud of them at the time. Some of them I'm still proud of.
But sometimes... I cringe.
Sometimes, I go back and read something I wrote years ago and just think "Oh my god. This is absolute and total shit."
Typos everywhere. Repeated dialogue conversations. Just... bad concepts. Just bad. Some of it was just bad.
Do any of you do that? Do any of you go back and read stuff you've written in the past and wonder how you ever thought it was good enough to share? Especially if it was well received at the time. Like "Why did people like this?!"
Because I do that ALL THE TIME!
I wrote a story called He's Just Not That Into You and it got RAVE reviews. I'd never felt like such hot stuff before in my life. People were really into it. So I wrote a sequel and people ate that up, too. And at the time, I was thinking "This is amazing! I could turn this into a book. I could rename the characters and market it as a series."
Then I go back and read it and think "This is gross."
The only good thing about this is that it shows me how much I've grown as a writer. I'm so much better now than I was. Even if my stories aren't as well received on this site, I know that they're better than some of the stuff I wrote earlier on.
Also, I'm beginning to wonder if people aren't finding my stuff as easily because of tagging. I tag all of my stories with things I think the plot relates to, but maybe I'm supposed to use other tags. I have no idea. If you know anything about that, let me know.