8 / 29
Feb 2019

Some of my early pieces of writing were atrocious so yeah, but they never got past the drafting phase.

No because if I didn't do it wrong, I would have never learned how to do it right. Like Bob Ross said; it's not a mistake if you learned from it.

Actually it is great you realized you were wrong. :slight_smile: You developed as a character. :smiley:

But no. I haven't written such a story I regretted later. I wasn't the best kid though. I mean I did not bullied anyone, but I did not help them as well and I really regret it because this kind of injures stay in people and can cause many problem in the world.
I think we should act more against child-bullying, because most of the kids are just not fully human to understand its full impact of these acts they do with each others. That's why I don't like school system. It closes children together for long time and leave them without their parents' protection.

hmmm I mean if the writing is straight up bad cause you were in 6th grade and have learned a lot that is one thing. But just cause a character has done something wrong isn't a reason to can a story, especially if by the end the character has learned that those early actions are wrong. That type of character development can be really satisfying to read.

I personally don't regret writing anything. I think a lot of what I've written is garbage(quality-wise), but it's not a regret that I wrote it. I'm still proud of myself for following through and completing stories. Also I learned a lot while doing it. A lot of stuff I'm not going to share with anyone, but I would never regret writing it.

@beta1042 Same. I feel when I do look back on some old writing, I cringe megahard at what I wrote in middle school.

But cringe and regret are two different things. :joy:

With the cringe comes acceptance that I've grown from that mindset and that writing. It's a reminder that "Hey! You done learned and grew up, kiddo! Good on you!"

I feel regret would be more along the lines of writing something you know wouldn't bring anything good outta it, if that makes sense?

It's one thing to write something and realize something's off when you come back to it or read over it. I feel it's another when you go into the writing, already knowing you're doing something you'll regret. Like a nagging feeling at the start.

I personally havn't written anything like this, but I could see regretting writing something that is really kid-inappropriate in your youth and then when you have kids being like yeahhhhh maybe I should throw this out.

Mostly cause the thought of your OWN kids reading something that inappropriate is sure to have some sort of backlash and awkward conversation that is just like... hmmmmm maybe I don't want to go there. I know that's why I've avoided drawing certain things since getting my tablet, the thought of my kids finding certain content done by me is a terrifying thought. Don't need to traumatize the young ones XD

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...
I remember that I had real human feelings, thoughts and ability to make simple conclusions, since the times I've learned to talk, at the very least. When I was a kid, I didn't know a lot of things, which I know now, I was less able to control my emotions and had less developed abstract thinking, but I still definitely was a human.
Kids are humans, and dehumanisation of particular groups of people is dangerous thing, it have lead to all kinds of totally unnecessary cruelty during the human history (including cruelty toward kids as well).

I've disposed many of my stories cause as time was passed, I've grown up and realised that

  1. The writing was vomit-enducingly bad.

or that they plots don't seems as anything interesting to me anymore.
But later I've started to doubt, was they really so bad or it was just perception distortion, caused by my unstable self-estimate? :thinking: I will never find out now ¯_(ツ)_/¯

2, In the start of the story I kind of bullied someone that I knew, he's "the weird kid at school."
The reason I stopped writing this was, it felt wrong. Creating this fictional world, Just to always remember the roots of the story were rotten, like I used to be.
For these reasons I can't even share my first actual story with my English teacher. All because of the first 4 pages. For if they found out I bullied a kid that is already bullied alot, that would really affect my reputation at school even though I have changed as a person since then.

I think I can agree with this reasoning. Inserting real people in your story may cause a lot of problems, especially if you make them look bad or mock on them in any of ways.

Are you saying you lose interest or the readers? If it is the readers, just keep working at it and read tons of popular comics and learn from them. If "you" lose interest than keep working eventually you will make a seires that you stick with. If you weren't cut out for comics you would have never tried in the first place.

So, good luck.

Part 2 of this story (or sequel or whatever). It was like...600-700 pages of meandering plot and it didn't even have an ending planned out for years, ate up a lot of my time and wanted to save on production so I cut corners and drew kinda shitty. I mean it does look cool visually in a few scenes and there are maybe 2-3 story arcs that felt kinda interesting but damn I could've just figured it out better in retrospect.

That kinda reminds me of a short story I wrote for an English assignment in primary school(I maybe was 9-11 years). I remember it being written the first person and based on actual incident that happen to me. However it was just way too personal for me to write especially with the last part of it involved me portraying one of my class mates(i even used their real name) alot worse than they actually were, they definitely didn't treat me as bad as several other kids during that time so I feel even worse doing that. I regret ever thinking that was a good idea to hand up.

I try not to be too hard on my kid self, everyone's cringy growing up but i'm at a point where I can just laugh at the childishness of my younger self without any malice.

I used to write A LOT of stories where the characters were trans, but I wasn't fully aware of the concept at the time.
I'm afraid those stories may have come off offensive to readers who understood their gender better than me.

I'm NB but didn't know it back then. I never said the character was trans or went into much detail about their gender yet there were a lot of telling moments that implied it, so I feel like I wasn't being informative or helpful to young readers who may have been going through gender soul searching themselves.

I'd hate for a story like that to be taken as the author being disrespectful to the subject. If I still had the log in info, I'd want to go back and make an authors note that those stories were written from the perspective of a very confused teen who was going through some stuff.

For me it's usually like this:
Stage one: I've got an idea, I like it, I work on it, I like what I'm doing, I'm finishing it.
Stage two: Three days later I'm dreadding to look at it, fearing, the cringe will kill me.
Stage three: Few years later I found the thing and think: "Hm... It was really good. Not like that shit I made three days earlier".

I can relate to that. I would write a lot of stories about my characters being abused to cope with my own.
Gutsy of you to hang it up!! But in terms of writing it out, I don't think you should be too hard on yourself. You were just trying to process your feelings.

It's like how we have dreams/nightmares of similar irl situations as a way for our brains to figure out what we could have done different. It could also show us that things could be worse in order to lessen whatever strong emotion is troubling us.

Basically all the stories I've ever made. Sometimes I ask myself first like, "Will I regret this after?" "yeah probably." But I still do it anyways because I like to suffer. :joy:

I wrote this story in 8th grade about everybody in the class being superheros and the teachers being villains and then I left it somewhere and the whole school read it . . . then in the end I made everyone die because I didn't want to write it anymore and I got in trouble . . . but then the principle was also in it so I got out of trouble because he thought his part was good.

I did it once in 4th grade too and the principle was there while I read it and he said I should write for tv . . . which was like a nice compliment. but the one in fourth grade just had my close friends and teacher and principle . . . not the whole school

I don't have any stories I outright regret making. "Regret" seems like too strong of a word, It's not like I've actively made the world worse than before with my stories...I hope...

It's just terrible writing when you look back at it.

But I'm honestly quite happy when I look back at those stories. Despite how terrible it is, I get nostalgic about them. It's like going back to a simpler time when you didn't know how to write well and you didn't care, you just wrote. I'd think about how differently I'd write it if I were to, say, remake this particular story idea. And a part of me indulges in bad stories, like a guilty pleasure.

Nah, I do not regret. I just label my stories as satire and pretend that they are bad on purpose.

More seriously though, one of the aspects of being an amnesiac is a general ignorance of all sorts of things I did when I was young. I might have made wonderful or terrible things as a child for all I know, and I do not remember any of it. As an adult, I have not really been productive enough to have an early and then late career.

My first ever comic that I made is so shameful, I pretend it never even happened x.x. Art was terrible, story was non-existent, plot kept changing, characters were bland, I didn't even write a proper script for it. Everything kind of just happened how it happened. Good god, and the comic is still out there in the interwebs. I pity anyone that finds it :x.

2 months later

Yeah... No use crying over spilled milk though. I find myself regretting nearly every comic decision I make now. So that's fun.