I just never know if I'm pretty good or kidding myself. I feel pretty sure I'm not the only one who goes through this. But there should be some "dreckometer" we can stick our stories in.

The first rule is that I am the most important thing...ever. Therefore my work is the most important ever.

The second rule is that I am never wrong.
Therefore if I think my work is great, it is.

Alas, it seems I am a terrible gauge of my own quality. I mean, I can tell that what I write is coherent. Sentences that make sense. Appropriate word choices. It's readable. Enjoyable? Meaningful? Enlightening? Um...., not really sure. And, then of course, I keep bumping into different preferences and tastes, forgetting that not everyone shares my own. For instance, it was somewhat surprising to me to recently learn another writer friend really prefers bleak, dark, brooding stuff. I don't care for that. I don't write that. Not that we can't crit each other's stuff, but it's going to be more of a challenge because I'll be asking her to lighten up and she'll be suggesting I find more ways to twist my stories.

But then again, there's something to learn in every exchange. I've recently taken a major beating on a story of mine. Every crit I got back was earnest in their attempt to convince me that the story needs major work. I comfort myself in thinking that the story must be kind of good, or the critiquers wouldn't have spent so darn much time telling me how awful this part was, how unbelievable that part was, etc. I have a ream of great feedback - if I can come to terms with this having been my best work. LOL

But then, in taking a step back from the story, and thinking again about the keys to good storytelling, I see that my MC doesn't have any significant character change or transformation, something that has always bugged me about the story. So I'm going to start him out in a darker place (so I can have my happy ending I want, LOL) - show more of a change in him. I also have to work on some small details that make for some implausibilities. Stuff that hadn't occurred to me because in my head, it was all backstory. Well, readers felt I skipped over too much. Gotta go back to basics on that - how much backstory is enough, how to work it in without heaps of exposition, etc.

This is good stuff! I'm learning a ton.

Same goes for my WIP novel. I'll finish a chapter, or section, and give it out to my reading friends. I'll have no love for what I've written, but they are sometimes entranced with it, and call me demanding to know "what happens next."

There are several finished manuscripts sitting on my hard drive that should have been in the hands of an editor a long time ago, except I continually convince myself that they're not good enough. Ergo, I spend gobs of time pouring over every line, in the belief that I'll find that one phrase, or sequence of words, that will crush all my doubts and transform the story into my breakout accomplishment.

In all this time, I neglected to make sure that the story itself was of breakout potential. I became an expert at tuning and polishing. I almost forgot how to write.

Then, when I finally sent it out in misdirected pride, yet got a rejection notice anyway, I realize that my excessive nit-picking not only made practically no difference in how my story was received, but it kept me from writing something else.

Somebody once asked me why I harbor so much apprehension towards trusting in my stories and sending them out at a more frequent pace. I'd like to believe I'm not the least bit afraid of rejection notices; I accept them (some of them, anyway) as a part of the learning process. Then, it occurred to me: perhaps, I was so accepting of that part of the process, I subconsciously began integrating the assumption of multiple rejection notices into my editing process. Essentially, I was doing the editor's job.

Recently I've begun correcting this former debilitating mindset by reminding myself of a very simple rule: I'd rather have editors tell me my story isn't good enough every other month for a year, than to hear myself say that it's not good enough every other day for a year. I still want to put out a great product, but I'm trusting my own writing so much more than ever. The end result: my stories are ready for submission much sooner, which I believe will accelerate my eventual breakout.

S!
S!...C!

(ON a side note, a shameless bit of self-promotion, feel free to stop by http://www.myspace.com/soulofthemachineband and check out my music. I've got a handful of songs up for free download if you like them.)

Anyway, your own art is like you husband/wife; it's impossible to judge it objectively.

On the one hand, you are in love with your art, (I'm assuming you are in love with your husband/wife as well). When you look at it, because you love iT, all you see are all the things that make it so awesome. Just like your husband/wife.

On the other hand, because you've spent so much time with it, you're also aware of eveery tiny little failing of your story (and spouse) that nobody else will ever see.

So, you have two different perceptions in your head...that the story is the greatest thing since Shakespeare (and possibly better than Bill), and that it is the worst piece of trash ever to sully an editor's mailbox (or it would be if you sent it out).

The truth (with your story and your husband/wife) is probably somewhere in between.

The exception is, of course, my wife. She really is the most incredible woman on the planet.

First off, if you finish a story you think is great and send it out for crits, and they come back all negative, that doesn't necessarily mean that your judgment was poor. It doesn't even mean that if we can take, as a given, that the judgment of all your critters was good. You have to look first at why you thought the story was good, and why the critters disagreed. If they disliked the very things you thought made it great (and you can trust them), then there's a problem. But if they disliked it for other reasons, then it's just a matter of you not having noticed the flaws. Do you agree that those things are flaws? Then fix them. Do you disagree? Then you need to figure out why the difference in opinion. If you disagree because they "just don't matter that much," then probably "all you see are all the things that make it so awesome," as wetwilly says, and they're blinding you to other things. If you disagree because your critters have different tastes in reading than you do, then you need a different set of critters.

But, regardless, in order to have a hope of properly evaluating your own work, you need to give yourself some time away from the story so you can read it fresh (well, almost fresh) later. The flaws (if flaws they be) should bother then like they bothered the other people. With the golden image in your mind of what you intended to do faded to pewter, you can see what you actually did.

You'll find at that point that your critters were right--or wrong. Either way, you'll have gained experience: "I need to remember to look for this," or "This is one of my strengths that these critters tend to overlook." The more experience of this sort you gather, the better your (initial) final drafts will be, and the less distance you'll need to successfully evaluate your stuff.

Pull out something you wrote a year ago, or two, or twenty (depending on how long you've been writing). If you can't see flaws that you never saw at the time (and I don't mean only tiny roughnesses), then you probably haven't had much quality critiquing experience in the meantime. Which is not to say that you'll find all that old stuff positively embarrassing. I can occasionally pull out something I wrote in high school (a longtime ago) and hit something in it that makes me go, "Hey, that was pretty good." But I'll also find things, some major, many minor, that clearly add up to unpublishability.

Distance and experience.

I tend to start with the feeling that it's horrible. The story arc isn't there and it's stupid and the writing is cliched. Then I get crits that say fix this and that but they're mostly positive so I fix things and think maybe it's pretty good. Then I start thinking about it, re-read it, and decide again that it must be dreck after all.

I suspect I get much better external feedback than anything I ever give myself. Although I will have periods of thinking it's good, that I've fixed whatever was wrong. Then when I look at it again I still feel like I don't like anything about it. Blech!

I evidently--from the comments--gave the impression that I thought it was good then got bad crits. It's pretty much the other way around. Sure critters will say that this and that needs to be fixed, but they tend to also tell me they like my work much more than I ever have.

What I'm talking about is my internal critique. Even what I've sold I look at and see so much wrong with it makes me cringe. I hate giving agents a list of sales for fear they'll look at what I sold and dislike my writing as much as I sometimes do.

Edit: I think of one story in particular that I actually once did delete. I just missed one of the versions is the only reason it's still out there. It's gotten both good and bad comments and I just don't know. Right now an editor has it and he emailed me saying he really liked it but needed the other editors to look it over. I just realize that I honestly think I may be one of the worst judges of my own work.

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Even worse, one day I'll think a story is my most brilliant work _ever_, the next day, my finger hovers over the "delete" key.

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... the more I learn about writing, the harder it is to do it right, because standards have risen.

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So, it's made me look harder for real critiquers. I have found that writers seem better at critiquing, and have stumbled across some friends in real life who are writers too. Wahoo, that's been great - someone to get coffee with who can trade notes on stories or storytelling.

Not every critiquer is a good match for me, but I think that's just part of the process. Finding people who can be honest with you without feeling like they're hurting your feelings when they point out the flaws in your story is key, IMHO.

I don't find that someone has to be a writer to be a good critter. The one who is best at looking for plot holes and consistency issues isn't a writer, but is a very intelligent reader.

Really my issues with judging my own work has very little to do with crits. If anything, having work critted adds to my confidence because I am having someone else's judgement come into play. If a good critter tells me that they like a story but it has a plot hole I need to fix at such and such a place, at least for a while I'll feel better after I fix the problem.

It's my own judgement I can't trust since I have such varying judgement from one day to the next.

Edit: But you're right, Kathleen, that when I first started I found it a lot easier to impress myself with my own work. At first, I think I was impressed that I could come out with something even reasonably coherent. LOL

You can't do that. You have to compare your story to other stuff that's out there, and to do that, you need to have distance from it. Read it after a substantial elapsed time period, NOT as your story, but as you would read any other story. I find flaws in pretty much anything I read, places where I'm momentarily confused, or a word that's used two times too close together, or worse things. How many of them ruin the story for me? Very few indeed. So when you find similar things in your own work, it's no cause for despondency.