Today, I Happened To Come Across My First Ever Piece Of Serious Writing From 2020. It Was A Harry Potter

Today, I happened to come across my first ever piece of serious writing from 2020. It was a Harry Potter fanfiction, and, at the time, was a piece longer than I ever could've dreamed of writing, sitting at around 77 pages in Google Docs. I read about the first ten pages, and OH BOY was it ROUGH.

But, I almost really like the idea that it was so bad. That piece of writing is five years old, and was when I first began by journey as a creative writer. In a way, the idea that it was bad was almost comforting, because I get to see how much I've truly changed and grown.

I looked at this piece of writing compared to one of my most recent fanfictions, and the difference is IMMACULATE in just the first two paragraphs. My old writing was heavily dialogue driven, contained so little detail, and felt rather bland, especially in terms of a character's emotions and actions. Now, I'm watching how detailed I am with each of my sentences, and how much attention I'm putting into each character. I can see where younger me was lacking, and where older me has recognized and fixed those holes and has grown beyond where I ever could've dreamed.

I think that, as writers, we often tend to lose track of how much we progress as we practice. It's really easy to get lost in the issues or problems we're having now, and neglect to think about how far we've truly come. We continue to focus on the negative instead of the positive; the future we want instead of where we were in the past.

My point is this: if at any moment you start to doubt your writing, or just think nothing is improving, go back and look at your old pieces. Don't change anything and just read through them. It's probably going to be really difficult, but it just shows how much you've grown and how much progress you've made over the course of your journey. I think you'll find that your writing has changed a lot more than you thought, and that, despite what you believe, you really have grown.

Instead of being embarrassed by your older pieces, use them to motivate you. Think about how much younger you would be shocked at how far you are right now, and just how proud they would be of you. You are currently at the position where younger you could only dream of being. And it's only going to go up from here 💖