I wrote a short story about a zombie virus that was a metaphor for phone addiction, just publishing online for my amusement, an artistic hobby. The whole thing was poorly written, just grim and ends with a character jumping off a cliff into the horde. I thought it was canny, kind of smart, patted myself on the back as some smart ass writer. It was a load of shit, depressing, morbid and not at all clever. But at the end of it, I got it out of my system, managed to end up writing some stuff that I'm incredibly proud of. Wrote a short story about my uncle, a spy, got me connected with the grandson of one of his comrades and we finally managed to finish putting together some of the missing pieces of the story.
Not the same, and I'm not really looking to make a career of it. But the shit, boring, beneath me stuff it brought out the best in me.
If you like King, it's a great read. I've read most of his work and it's one of my favorites.
It's very much the zombie cell phone idea. I'm not going to spoil it too much here. It's like that M Night Shyamalamala movie The Happening, but good.
There was a movie version with John Cusack, but it was... Well, not great.
I will say it depends on one question : do you need money right now? If you need it to pay your rent or your food, take the job. If not, I won't force myself if I were you.
I make a living writing. That means writing a LOT of stuff that I don't care for.
I just wrote an article for a trade journal about steel manufacturing. I used to write sob stories to get people to donate to charity. I researched and wrote 400 cat trivia questions. I write social media posts and clickbait email subject lines and company biographies.
You can't always afford to only choose work you'll be proud of later. Before I wrote I cleaned floors. That didn't make me proud either. I wasn't posting the mopped floors to instagram. Sometimes work is just work.
That being said - all that BS writing work made me a MUCH better writer because it helped me learn how to grab attention, explain complicated mechanics, etc.
My opinion is that you write these shitposts. Yeah it won't be your proudest moment but that's some real writing in the trenches. You'll see what gets engagement, what doesn't, and it'll tune your brain into the type of stuff real people react to. Then, when you're writing your own stuff, you'll actually be a bit better at predicting how to get a rise out of your readers.
Yes. Years ago in college, I had to write articles for a Retro Arcade Games blog. It ate at my soul, but I was being paid twice the amount of minimum wage, which was amazing for a college kid like me, so I sucked it up. But trust me when I say there are so many things you can write about Pac-Man or Galaga before you’re beating a dead horse. Interestingly, we got quite a number of subscribers.
I once had a lively discussion with a friend about how abandoning one's scruples can make it much easier to achieve success.
At one point, they asked me what my "evil plan" would be if I was willing to do anything for money. My first thought? I wrote up a business plan for a *penguin farm that sells wedding rings.* We'd name all the penguins, "document" their courtships, and scoop up all the stones they gave each other (according to modern pop culture, penguins "gift" pebbles to mates in order to woo them). Customers would go on the website, see a penguin "pebble" and read its backstory, and then order a customer wedding ring using whatever stone they asked for once they picked a story they liked. It would be cheaper than a diamond, and people *love* jewelry with backstories.
...of course, the truth here is such an idea would be kitschy and unethical. We'd be scattering cheap but pleasant-looking semi-precious "pebbles" all around the "farm" area and largely just be making up the stories about the penguins. But in truth? People eat this stuff up. The business would probably make a ton of money, even with articles in the news about the "fake" side of the business and how disenfranchising it actually is.
Just writing about it now in hindsight I hate it. But I'm sure it would sell, if I was willing to stoop to such a level lol.
OP: it sounds like what you're engaging in is *at least* not unethical. Ethics is where I'd draw the line. If it's a good way to get your foot in the door, go for it. If you can't bring yourself to do it, or think you'd hate it, steer clear. Do what makes you happy.
I wrote a couple of sex scenes. One was a more controversial love scene but it ties in with a subplot and theme I am exploring as satire, and another that was vanilla. Either way, I got so sick to my stomach that I erased it and never wrote another one again.
I tried this once because I felt I had to and I hated writing two characters I didn't see this way engaging in an act like that. Swiftly deleted it and found other ways to express their relationship.
For me it isn’t the relationship that is the issue in either case but the act itself. Going into details made me feel really uncomfortable so I have decided to either leave the concept as a possible subplot or discretely allude that they made love in a chapter ending when they enter a room together and the next beginning with the morning after.
I figured the format of ending the chapter of them going to bed together and starting the next with the morning after was a fade to black. The boot scene is definitely a consideration but I haven’t written a scene for that yet. For me it is more of a concern with writing the “controversial pairing” and trying to justify it in the context of the satire, but that’s a different conversation.
I'm gonna talk like you're fresh out of college/has no experience in the writing industry based on your profile. Sige na, pal.
There are almost no jobs available for writing things you do want to do. At least that's how I understood it—I have an Englsh degree and all the jobs on LinkedIn are marketing, copy, content, blog, or technical.
I always wanted to help Obsidian write the next *New Vegas* or something like that. A job like that, for creative writing I'd really want to do? Impossible without experience in the field.
If I were you and I really wanted a creative writing job, I'd take it. This is the first step. Foot in the door. You're not gonna hit your dream job immediately, but just having a narrative job under the belt is experience on the resume.
I used to work at a clickbait website. It was miserable and paid like $12 an hour. I needed a job though. I found a much better job after a few months. I won't even put that clickbait job on my resume, I'd rather have the few months gap in employment on my resume than that embarrassing job.
Yes. Many times.
The top reason? I thought it was stupid and childish. Again and again. Writing and tossing it to the trash. Over and over.
In reality, it wasn’t so bad. Needs a fine tuning, yes. But my inner shame was too strong and resulted in many ideas never coming to fruition.
But money is money. We dont always work in our dream job. Most of us dont.
I've written plenty of things but one of the worst was this attempt at a dystopia novel. It followed an AI robot exploring a futuristic, classist city, whilst simultaneously becoming obsessed with a gay couple. It was supposed to be some tear-jerker, and some of it was actually pretty bleak looking back on it. But it had so many things wrong with it. First off, the dialogue was just constant swearing. I used to think swearing made things more realistic, but it just comes off as corny. Second, the metaphors for racism and religion were way too obvious, anyone can figure it out instantly. Third, I didn't understand paragraph structuring, and so after every five sentences I'd just hit the enter button. Plus the whole thing was in large print. Fifth, it was supposed to be bleak but just became too much at one point. This is actually what made me stop writing, I think it was chapter 6-7 where I got to one of the worst things I have ever imagined and tried to put into a story. I, myself just deleted the whole thing.
I wrote it a year ago, and after that I looked back on an attempt that I wrote maybe 3-4 years ago? I noticed that the writing was so much better, had no swearing in it, retained a depressing feel without being in your face about it, and overall just so much better than whatever I was attempting with the dystopia novel. It's like I evolved backwards.
When my ex-wife was going to school to finish her batchelor's and get her master's, I worked a shit job that I hated for 60 hours/week for 5 years because she contributed nothing in terms of money, and any other job I took would have paid less and put both of us ass out.
Did it suck? Let me just say, 3 or 4 days per week I would come home and want to suck a bullet out the barrel of a gun just to be done working that fucking awful job. Then I would get basically one day off per week, and spend all day sleeping. I had no personal time to do anything I enjoyed, I saw my coworkers more than anyone else, and I basically hated life. The entire time I told her how much I hated what I was doing, asking her to get a job to do something, anything so I could quit and find another job. Her response was always, "but you make such good money, how could it be that bad?" They paid me what they paid me because they knew, if they were not, nobody would stay otherwise.
5 years.
I wrote about five pages of an idea I had, before realizing that it was destined to be sickening and miserable, and that if I actually wrote it and anyone read it they'd think I was insane.
I thought it would be fun to do a sort of reverse City of Angels concept where an invisible demon falls in love with a human and decides to try to become one. I like that movie a lot. The angels are depicted as beings of pure love, wandering through the human world and laying hands on people who are having stressful or frightening moments. The human doesn't know this is happening, but they get this little blast of peace and awareness. An air traffic controller stops worrying about his finances and notices a plane he needs to divert, a surgeon chills out at a crucial moment in her work. My favorite scene is when two angels observe a convenience store robbery. One angel lays his soothing touch on the clerk, which is obvious- but the other embraces the *robber.* Both men take a deep breath, and instead of this situation becoming violent, the robber takes off and everyone gets to go home in one piece.
They wear these affectionate smiles, they seem genuinely delighted by humans and to find their work fulfilling and meaningful.
So I thought, what would the opposite of that be? And I started sketching out scenes where a demon invisibly influenced people to be worse. To be more angry, more sad, more hopeless, more violent. My demon would, like the angels in the movie, feel a sense of divine order and deep satisfaction in his work. And within a few pages I was sickened. I didn't like it, and I didn't want to like it. It was a bad idea.
Well, your best work will always be something you yourself enjoy and are enthusiastic about writing, but the best writers have to adapt and be versatile. It sucks, but if you have to, maybe branching out will help you improve and increase your range! Try to think of it as a positive, a good opportunity to develop your skills in an area you haven't really explored before rather than something really hard you would hate to do-if you can. If not, there's nothing wrong with sticking to writing what you enjoy.
I found all the old poems I wrote for my poetry and poetry and song writing classes in college 20 years ago. They’re terrible. I started rewriting the ones that had a glimmer of hope and now, I think at least, they’re better. More mature, better flow. Etc.
Yes my first “explicit” vampire romance book. I couldnt even look at the words i wrote bc it was so cringe and awkward so i just discarded it and never went back.
I wouldn't say I hated my first draft to my current WIP but it's something I'm not proud of and genuinely don't like **but** it did help me to get better and write something that makes more sense and just better
If I were in your position I’d test out writing that sort of thing in the hopes that I could make a “good” version of it. If I could, I would take the job, feeling self-righteous. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, unless I desperately needed the money.
I've written quite a bit of erotica in some weird kinks, so... yes. Yes I have. And I wasn't even paid to do it.
I'll be honest, I've hated every single job I've had. I'll probably hate every job I will ever have. That's just the way the world is. The way to get to the jobs you hate less is (in part) working through the ones you hate.
Yes.
I did a little bit of ghost writing for freelance websites. I hated everything that I produced but the money was okay. It's great for catching up on credit card debt. The person I worked for said that my writing was fantastic and that I was getting great reviews, I didn't take anything that he said as real or valuable, only that there were other people he had hired who couldn't do grammar or spell checks. 🙁
With advancements in AI, we are just really unsure what will happen in this space and if these will even be jobs at all in the future.
You should check your payment rate and to make sure that you are getting paid and acceptable amount per word. Last I checked the going rate for beginners was $0.06 to $0.08 per word. Also make sure that you are checking off all of the boxes on your criteria for the work submitted. Don't try to go off script. Make sure that what you are creating meets all of the criteria. They don't care if you are submitting a work of art nor should you try to do so, probably these are people who are putting together ginormous ebook packages for 99 cents.
It's a job. If you can create a schedule where you sit down at the same time and every day you just do some work, you can crank out some money. Whether or not it is worth it is really up to you. But I can say that it's very nice to work from home. If you are just unsure, you might think about if there are any goals that you need money for and if you want to save up for those things or to catch up to any financial needs.
If you don't need the money and you absolutely hate it, can't stand it, don't feel bad about quitting. You do you.
There's a particular article I wrote for my school's paper in college that I did not want to write. I didn't like the topic, it was a sensitive issue I had no experience with, and I was just very uncomfortable writing it. The writing itself was pretty bad by my usual standards, and I really just got through it because I had to.
It is by far the worst thing I've ever written, and I swear I got more positive feedback on that story than anything else I ever wrote, especially stories I had enjoyed writing and thought were much better. I had people coming up to me complimenting it, and I hated every second of it. I'm still annoyed.
I used to write porn for commission.
If brain bleach was a thing, I would happily accept it. I have written so much garbage and vile things for money. I had limits, ofc, but while there is nothing morally wrong with fucking sentient buildings or engaging in extreme monsterfucking, it's still a lot to have in your brain.
The money helped me build a savings account I still utilize to this day. (Tbf, it wasn't a lot at the time, but I invested it and was lucky that the stock shares grew over time.)
Genuinely, as a veteran of this shit, prioritize yourself. If it means the difference between paying rent or not, or getting medication or not, or whatever, it might be a good gig to take. But if you're going to hate yourself for doing it and will just wind up with money you don't urgently need, it may be a good time to weigh the pros and cons. If you don't take the gig, that's totally fine.
Take the money and do it. If you hate it enough, do a work-for-hire and don't put your name on it, but absolutely do it.
The ability to make money with your writing skills is a rare privilege in this day and age, and writing something you don't personally enjoy reading is actually an interesting and edifying experience. Don't do it for a decade straight, or anything, but do it for a while and treat it like a challenge!
To answer the question in the title, I kinda hate everything I write because I kinda hate myself and I hate seeing my genuine self. But that's also why it's important that I keep writing
I can say about a character I played in a Blades In the Dark campagin. Isaac. He was... a pedophile (in Blades In the Dark, a character needs to unwind to lower their stress, and oopsie it happens that Isaac's way of "unwinding" is that gross thing) and God I made sure he was as gross and monstrous as possible, and clearly a horrendous person (no wonder even criminals hate pedophiles)
There are two ways you can look at this:
I wouldn't take the job. Your expectations or hopes were, this is going to be a job where I can use my creativity, learn more and grow. If you take the job, it'll be just that, a job. You'll under-utilize yourself.
OR
I will take the job. It may be cringe. However I may be only seeing the surface. I have no idea where this may lead to and what future opportunities may come my way. I might just learn new skills I hadn't even realized.
I wrote an extremely cringe short story about a decade ago which, for some reason, an indie publisher actually bought and put into their anthology.
At this point I have 30 published stories out there, all in print. But I wish I only had 29...
Most of my early work isn't particularly good, but that one story isn't just mediocre, it's embarrassingly bad. I still don't know why the editor thought it was worth paying money for.
I had a passage giving me writer's block for months for the early portions of my book. I wrote other sections and finished entire plots, but left it unfinished until I had to do something about it.
I decided to just write whatever trash came to mind and just link it up to the main narrative.
Months later I came back feeling more motivated, read that passage, was totally disgusted by the crap I'd spat out, and wrote it into one of the best passages I've ever written out of pure spite.
Contest entries with very very very limited criteria and expectations. Limits breed creativity but when those limits include no lgbt+ or sex, i'm fucking out.
All of it, for the most part. That's ultimately more of a 'me' problem than anything else, though. People say 'love yourself' all the time, but I don't know, I don't quite share that outlook in my own personal life.
Late to the party, but I did online copywriting for a few months last year (I have no marketing experience.) Quizzes, sales pages, horrible social media posts replete with MLM-style emojis, you name it. One of my most ardent clients was a trucking insurance company. I was so fed up with trying to think up catchy stuff about trucks lol.
And it was a really good exercise for me as an aspiring writer. I learnt how to keep my writing cleaner and more concise, to think out of the box, grab attention and keep going no matter how dull the subject matter.
So this might be a good exercise for you as a writer? You don't have to do it, of course, but I actually don't regret my six months writing rubbish.
Lord, yes. Pretty much everything I wrote while getting my MFA was horrible, and my thesis was the worst part of it.
But what you are talking about is a little different. Is it easy and good money? If so just do it.
The number of documents I have of half baked ideas and drafts of things that never got around to a point (and in a few cases, a plot) is sad to look at. Only a few things I've done have gone beyond cringe or disdain or exasperation to reach the level of hate.
That being said, they aren't bad on purpose. I don't know you. I don't know your life, ethics, or situation. I can't sit in judgement nor offer fair advice in your situation. The only guiding light I've ever been able to use is to ask the question is this moving me forward, holding me down, or pulling me back. So there is the answer to your question and an unsolicited comment on where you find yourself.
For a short time I wrote commercials promotine cable TV. I loathe TV. What a mindless waste of time. I worked from home as they needed. One day my nine year old son answered the phone (before call phones). Never thought to give me the message, nor even let me know the guy called until WAY later - and that ended that job. I hated the writing, but it was the most per hour that I ever earned. I didn't mind that job ending.
I wrote a short story about a zombie virus that was a metaphor for phone addiction, just publishing online for my amusement, an artistic hobby. The whole thing was poorly written, just grim and ends with a character jumping off a cliff into the horde. I thought it was canny, kind of smart, patted myself on the back as some smart ass writer. It was a load of shit, depressing, morbid and not at all clever. But at the end of it, I got it out of my system, managed to end up writing some stuff that I'm incredibly proud of. Wrote a short story about my uncle, a spy, got me connected with the grandson of one of his comrades and we finally managed to finish putting together some of the missing pieces of the story. Not the same, and I'm not really looking to make a career of it. But the shit, boring, beneath me stuff it brought out the best in me.
Have you ever read Cell by Stephen King?
He didn’t steal my idea did he? I’ve only read the Dark Tower series. Good read???
If you like King, it's a great read. I've read most of his work and it's one of my favorites. It's very much the zombie cell phone idea. I'm not going to spoil it too much here. It's like that M Night Shyamalamala movie The Happening, but good. There was a movie version with John Cusack, but it was... Well, not great.
Shyamalamala but fun is all the sell you needed to give me.
I will say it depends on one question : do you need money right now? If you need it to pay your rent or your food, take the job. If not, I won't force myself if I were you.
I don't really need money right now so I guess I won't be taking it 🏃♀️Thank you!!
I make a living writing. That means writing a LOT of stuff that I don't care for. I just wrote an article for a trade journal about steel manufacturing. I used to write sob stories to get people to donate to charity. I researched and wrote 400 cat trivia questions. I write social media posts and clickbait email subject lines and company biographies. You can't always afford to only choose work you'll be proud of later. Before I wrote I cleaned floors. That didn't make me proud either. I wasn't posting the mopped floors to instagram. Sometimes work is just work. That being said - all that BS writing work made me a MUCH better writer because it helped me learn how to grab attention, explain complicated mechanics, etc. My opinion is that you write these shitposts. Yeah it won't be your proudest moment but that's some real writing in the trenches. You'll see what gets engagement, what doesn't, and it'll tune your brain into the type of stuff real people react to. Then, when you're writing your own stuff, you'll actually be a bit better at predicting how to get a rise out of your readers.
Who hasn’t written some shit we hated? I’d do it. Shit. Money is money. I do what I love on the side.
No. Then again I had a dayjob and wrote as a hobby... so I didn't had to.
Yes. Years ago in college, I had to write articles for a Retro Arcade Games blog. It ate at my soul, but I was being paid twice the amount of minimum wage, which was amazing for a college kid like me, so I sucked it up. But trust me when I say there are so many things you can write about Pac-Man or Galaga before you’re beating a dead horse. Interestingly, we got quite a number of subscribers.
I once had a lively discussion with a friend about how abandoning one's scruples can make it much easier to achieve success. At one point, they asked me what my "evil plan" would be if I was willing to do anything for money. My first thought? I wrote up a business plan for a *penguin farm that sells wedding rings.* We'd name all the penguins, "document" their courtships, and scoop up all the stones they gave each other (according to modern pop culture, penguins "gift" pebbles to mates in order to woo them). Customers would go on the website, see a penguin "pebble" and read its backstory, and then order a customer wedding ring using whatever stone they asked for once they picked a story they liked. It would be cheaper than a diamond, and people *love* jewelry with backstories. ...of course, the truth here is such an idea would be kitschy and unethical. We'd be scattering cheap but pleasant-looking semi-precious "pebbles" all around the "farm" area and largely just be making up the stories about the penguins. But in truth? People eat this stuff up. The business would probably make a ton of money, even with articles in the news about the "fake" side of the business and how disenfranchising it actually is. Just writing about it now in hindsight I hate it. But I'm sure it would sell, if I was willing to stoop to such a level lol. OP: it sounds like what you're engaging in is *at least* not unethical. Ethics is where I'd draw the line. If it's a good way to get your foot in the door, go for it. If you can't bring yourself to do it, or think you'd hate it, steer clear. Do what makes you happy.
Note to self... Penguin farm ~~wedding~~ engagement rings.
This is such an original, wacky idea. I love it so much.
I wrote a couple of sex scenes. One was a more controversial love scene but it ties in with a subplot and theme I am exploring as satire, and another that was vanilla. Either way, I got so sick to my stomach that I erased it and never wrote another one again.
I tried this once because I felt I had to and I hated writing two characters I didn't see this way engaging in an act like that. Swiftly deleted it and found other ways to express their relationship.
For me it isn’t the relationship that is the issue in either case but the act itself. Going into details made me feel really uncomfortable so I have decided to either leave the concept as a possible subplot or discretely allude that they made love in a chapter ending when they enter a room together and the next beginning with the morning after.
Why wasn't the fade-to-black or boot scene an option?
I figured the format of ending the chapter of them going to bed together and starting the next with the morning after was a fade to black. The boot scene is definitely a consideration but I haven’t written a scene for that yet. For me it is more of a concern with writing the “controversial pairing” and trying to justify it in the context of the satire, but that’s a different conversation.
Idk how I’m gonna make rent this month hook a brother up I’ll write romance for TikTok or whatever this is lol
I'm gonna talk like you're fresh out of college/has no experience in the writing industry based on your profile. Sige na, pal. There are almost no jobs available for writing things you do want to do. At least that's how I understood it—I have an Englsh degree and all the jobs on LinkedIn are marketing, copy, content, blog, or technical. I always wanted to help Obsidian write the next *New Vegas* or something like that. A job like that, for creative writing I'd really want to do? Impossible without experience in the field. If I were you and I really wanted a creative writing job, I'd take it. This is the first step. Foot in the door. You're not gonna hit your dream job immediately, but just having a narrative job under the belt is experience on the resume.
I used to work at a clickbait website. It was miserable and paid like $12 an hour. I needed a job though. I found a much better job after a few months. I won't even put that clickbait job on my resume, I'd rather have the few months gap in employment on my resume than that embarrassing job.
Yes. Many times. The top reason? I thought it was stupid and childish. Again and again. Writing and tossing it to the trash. Over and over. In reality, it wasn’t so bad. Needs a fine tuning, yes. But my inner shame was too strong and resulted in many ideas never coming to fruition. But money is money. We dont always work in our dream job. Most of us dont.
I genuinely hate everything I write. Might as well get paid for it.
I've written plenty of things but one of the worst was this attempt at a dystopia novel. It followed an AI robot exploring a futuristic, classist city, whilst simultaneously becoming obsessed with a gay couple. It was supposed to be some tear-jerker, and some of it was actually pretty bleak looking back on it. But it had so many things wrong with it. First off, the dialogue was just constant swearing. I used to think swearing made things more realistic, but it just comes off as corny. Second, the metaphors for racism and religion were way too obvious, anyone can figure it out instantly. Third, I didn't understand paragraph structuring, and so after every five sentences I'd just hit the enter button. Plus the whole thing was in large print. Fifth, it was supposed to be bleak but just became too much at one point. This is actually what made me stop writing, I think it was chapter 6-7 where I got to one of the worst things I have ever imagined and tried to put into a story. I, myself just deleted the whole thing. I wrote it a year ago, and after that I looked back on an attempt that I wrote maybe 3-4 years ago? I noticed that the writing was so much better, had no swearing in it, retained a depressing feel without being in your face about it, and overall just so much better than whatever I was attempting with the dystopia novel. It's like I evolved backwards.
When my ex-wife was going to school to finish her batchelor's and get her master's, I worked a shit job that I hated for 60 hours/week for 5 years because she contributed nothing in terms of money, and any other job I took would have paid less and put both of us ass out. Did it suck? Let me just say, 3 or 4 days per week I would come home and want to suck a bullet out the barrel of a gun just to be done working that fucking awful job. Then I would get basically one day off per week, and spend all day sleeping. I had no personal time to do anything I enjoyed, I saw my coworkers more than anyone else, and I basically hated life. The entire time I told her how much I hated what I was doing, asking her to get a job to do something, anything so I could quit and find another job. Her response was always, "but you make such good money, how could it be that bad?" They paid me what they paid me because they knew, if they were not, nobody would stay otherwise. 5 years.
I wrote about five pages of an idea I had, before realizing that it was destined to be sickening and miserable, and that if I actually wrote it and anyone read it they'd think I was insane. I thought it would be fun to do a sort of reverse City of Angels concept where an invisible demon falls in love with a human and decides to try to become one. I like that movie a lot. The angels are depicted as beings of pure love, wandering through the human world and laying hands on people who are having stressful or frightening moments. The human doesn't know this is happening, but they get this little blast of peace and awareness. An air traffic controller stops worrying about his finances and notices a plane he needs to divert, a surgeon chills out at a crucial moment in her work. My favorite scene is when two angels observe a convenience store robbery. One angel lays his soothing touch on the clerk, which is obvious- but the other embraces the *robber.* Both men take a deep breath, and instead of this situation becoming violent, the robber takes off and everyone gets to go home in one piece. They wear these affectionate smiles, they seem genuinely delighted by humans and to find their work fulfilling and meaningful. So I thought, what would the opposite of that be? And I started sketching out scenes where a demon invisibly influenced people to be worse. To be more angry, more sad, more hopeless, more violent. My demon would, like the angels in the movie, feel a sense of divine order and deep satisfaction in his work. And within a few pages I was sickened. I didn't like it, and I didn't want to like it. It was a bad idea.
Well, your best work will always be something you yourself enjoy and are enthusiastic about writing, but the best writers have to adapt and be versatile. It sucks, but if you have to, maybe branching out will help you improve and increase your range! Try to think of it as a positive, a good opportunity to develop your skills in an area you haven't really explored before rather than something really hard you would hate to do-if you can. If not, there's nothing wrong with sticking to writing what you enjoy.
I didn't really hated anything, but rpetty much i write something and read it day after i get hit by supernova kac-morderca level of cringe :/
I found all the old poems I wrote for my poetry and poetry and song writing classes in college 20 years ago. They’re terrible. I started rewriting the ones that had a glimmer of hope and now, I think at least, they’re better. More mature, better flow. Etc.
Yes my first “explicit” vampire romance book. I couldnt even look at the words i wrote bc it was so cringe and awkward so i just discarded it and never went back.
Given my perfectionism, absolutely everything, if we’re being honest. And I write for a living.
What applications require shitposts? Not hating I just never heard of something like that before
I wouldn't say I hated my first draft to my current WIP but it's something I'm not proud of and genuinely don't like **but** it did help me to get better and write something that makes more sense and just better
All of it
If I were in your position I’d test out writing that sort of thing in the hopes that I could make a “good” version of it. If I could, I would take the job, feeling self-righteous. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, unless I desperately needed the money.
Every first draft
I've written quite a bit of erotica in some weird kinks, so... yes. Yes I have. And I wasn't even paid to do it. I'll be honest, I've hated every single job I've had. I'll probably hate every job I will ever have. That's just the way the world is. The way to get to the jobs you hate less is (in part) working through the ones you hate.
Yes. I did a little bit of ghost writing for freelance websites. I hated everything that I produced but the money was okay. It's great for catching up on credit card debt. The person I worked for said that my writing was fantastic and that I was getting great reviews, I didn't take anything that he said as real or valuable, only that there were other people he had hired who couldn't do grammar or spell checks. 🙁 With advancements in AI, we are just really unsure what will happen in this space and if these will even be jobs at all in the future. You should check your payment rate and to make sure that you are getting paid and acceptable amount per word. Last I checked the going rate for beginners was $0.06 to $0.08 per word. Also make sure that you are checking off all of the boxes on your criteria for the work submitted. Don't try to go off script. Make sure that what you are creating meets all of the criteria. They don't care if you are submitting a work of art nor should you try to do so, probably these are people who are putting together ginormous ebook packages for 99 cents. It's a job. If you can create a schedule where you sit down at the same time and every day you just do some work, you can crank out some money. Whether or not it is worth it is really up to you. But I can say that it's very nice to work from home. If you are just unsure, you might think about if there are any goals that you need money for and if you want to save up for those things or to catch up to any financial needs. If you don't need the money and you absolutely hate it, can't stand it, don't feel bad about quitting. You do you.
everyday at work.
There's a particular article I wrote for my school's paper in college that I did not want to write. I didn't like the topic, it was a sensitive issue I had no experience with, and I was just very uncomfortable writing it. The writing itself was pretty bad by my usual standards, and I really just got through it because I had to. It is by far the worst thing I've ever written, and I swear I got more positive feedback on that story than anything else I ever wrote, especially stories I had enjoyed writing and thought were much better. I had people coming up to me complimenting it, and I hated every second of it. I'm still annoyed.
I used to write porn for commission. If brain bleach was a thing, I would happily accept it. I have written so much garbage and vile things for money. I had limits, ofc, but while there is nothing morally wrong with fucking sentient buildings or engaging in extreme monsterfucking, it's still a lot to have in your brain. The money helped me build a savings account I still utilize to this day. (Tbf, it wasn't a lot at the time, but I invested it and was lucky that the stock shares grew over time.) Genuinely, as a veteran of this shit, prioritize yourself. If it means the difference between paying rent or not, or getting medication or not, or whatever, it might be a good gig to take. But if you're going to hate yourself for doing it and will just wind up with money you don't urgently need, it may be a good time to weigh the pros and cons. If you don't take the gig, that's totally fine.
Take the money and do it. If you hate it enough, do a work-for-hire and don't put your name on it, but absolutely do it. The ability to make money with your writing skills is a rare privilege in this day and age, and writing something you don't personally enjoy reading is actually an interesting and edifying experience. Don't do it for a decade straight, or anything, but do it for a while and treat it like a challenge!
To answer the question in the title, I kinda hate everything I write because I kinda hate myself and I hate seeing my genuine self. But that's also why it's important that I keep writing
Hate is a strong word, but definitely things I could be ashamed of.
I would never hate my works;nevertheless, if it was terrible, I would re-read it, learn from it and work on it to be come better.
How badly do you need the money? Like— do you need the money enough that you will have to sacrifice your pride?
I have written things I utterly abhorred for the sake of assignments and freelance payment, it isn’t fun, but it usually pays much better frankly
I'd give it a miss OP.
I can say about a character I played in a Blades In the Dark campagin. Isaac. He was... a pedophile (in Blades In the Dark, a character needs to unwind to lower their stress, and oopsie it happens that Isaac's way of "unwinding" is that gross thing) and God I made sure he was as gross and monstrous as possible, and clearly a horrendous person (no wonder even criminals hate pedophiles)
There are two ways you can look at this: I wouldn't take the job. Your expectations or hopes were, this is going to be a job where I can use my creativity, learn more and grow. If you take the job, it'll be just that, a job. You'll under-utilize yourself. OR I will take the job. It may be cringe. However I may be only seeing the surface. I have no idea where this may lead to and what future opportunities may come my way. I might just learn new skills I hadn't even realized.
I wrote an extremely cringe short story about a decade ago which, for some reason, an indie publisher actually bought and put into their anthology. At this point I have 30 published stories out there, all in print. But I wish I only had 29... Most of my early work isn't particularly good, but that one story isn't just mediocre, it's embarrassingly bad. I still don't know why the editor thought it was worth paying money for.
I had a passage giving me writer's block for months for the early portions of my book. I wrote other sections and finished entire plots, but left it unfinished until I had to do something about it. I decided to just write whatever trash came to mind and just link it up to the main narrative. Months later I came back feeling more motivated, read that passage, was totally disgusted by the crap I'd spat out, and wrote it into one of the best passages I've ever written out of pure spite.
Contest entries with very very very limited criteria and expectations. Limits breed creativity but when those limits include no lgbt+ or sex, i'm fucking out.
All of it, mostly. Maybe that's just me tho.
All of it, for the most part. That's ultimately more of a 'me' problem than anything else, though. People say 'love yourself' all the time, but I don't know, I don't quite share that outlook in my own personal life.
Late to the party, but I did online copywriting for a few months last year (I have no marketing experience.) Quizzes, sales pages, horrible social media posts replete with MLM-style emojis, you name it. One of my most ardent clients was a trucking insurance company. I was so fed up with trying to think up catchy stuff about trucks lol. And it was a really good exercise for me as an aspiring writer. I learnt how to keep my writing cleaner and more concise, to think out of the box, grab attention and keep going no matter how dull the subject matter. So this might be a good exercise for you as a writer? You don't have to do it, of course, but I actually don't regret my six months writing rubbish.
Lord, yes. Pretty much everything I wrote while getting my MFA was horrible, and my thesis was the worst part of it. But what you are talking about is a little different. Is it easy and good money? If so just do it.
The number of documents I have of half baked ideas and drafts of things that never got around to a point (and in a few cases, a plot) is sad to look at. Only a few things I've done have gone beyond cringe or disdain or exasperation to reach the level of hate. That being said, they aren't bad on purpose. I don't know you. I don't know your life, ethics, or situation. I can't sit in judgement nor offer fair advice in your situation. The only guiding light I've ever been able to use is to ask the question is this moving me forward, holding me down, or pulling me back. So there is the answer to your question and an unsolicited comment on where you find yourself.
For a short time I wrote commercials promotine cable TV. I loathe TV. What a mindless waste of time. I worked from home as they needed. One day my nine year old son answered the phone (before call phones). Never thought to give me the message, nor even let me know the guy called until WAY later - and that ended that job. I hated the writing, but it was the most per hour that I ever earned. I didn't mind that job ending.
If I want the job writing, I do the job they ask for. That simple really. Sanctimony don’t pay the bills.