I wrote a story I hated

I finished a flash story last week about a woman protecting her rooftop pool in a flooded Bangkok.

I hated it.

I read it ten times and each time found another thing that bothered me.

But I will do my best to finish it and publish it.

When you're building a writing career, you'll write things you hate temporarily (or permanently). Some will grow on you after distance, and others won't.

I thought this mattered. But it never did as much as I thought.

I used to believe that hating what I wrote meant it wasn't ready, and I needed to keep polishing until the bad feeling went away.

But that feeling often never entirely goes away.

There's always something I could improve, some line I could tighten, and some wording choice that nags at me at night after I've published.

The question isn't whether the piece feels perfect. It's whether someone might get value from it and whether fixing it would cost more time than it's worth.

Most of the time, the answer is: Publish the damn thing and move on, buddy!

Writing has suffering baked into it. When I simply accepted that this was part of the journey, I found the whole process easier. I didn't splutter and stop so often. I wrote through the annoyance, and often those annoyances would fade anyway.

They fade especially quickly when I focus on the broader portfolio of pieces of writing I was building, rather than the 'wonderful perfection' of any individual piece.

I stopped hanging around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a good feeling to arrive before I hit publish.

It's the momentum from repeated publishes that wins the day.

It's this that makes it easier and easier to return and start to fall in love with the craft.

By the way, my course, Online Writing Alchemy guides you through how to write unforgettable posts without getting stuck in endless revision cycles.

It shows you the 16 secrets to making your writing zing, including when to polish and when to just ship.

You'll get practical exercises, a 6-month roadmap, and the exact framework for turning decent writing into magnetic writing that people remember.

Grab Online Writing Alchemy here.

Alex