 I like to imagine sometimes that I would wake up one day and find at the foot of my bed a time machine. There's a lot of things I would do if I had a time machine. I could hang out with Queen for a day. Maybe visit medieval Europe and convince them that I'm a wizard with my 21st century technology and promptly be burned at the stake. But for the sake of this video, I'll talk about something I would do that's maybe a tad less exciting. I would go back to 2016 and I would beat the shit out of myself. Okay, maybe that's a little extreme. But I would like to stop myself from hitting publish on what I would later reflect on as a mistake. What's shaking book two? My name is Cam and welcome back to another video. It was just last year that I was pulling my hair out trying to write myself out of a figurative hole that I dug. A hole that I dug for myself when with no real forethought or proper preparation, I decided I was ready to put out not one, but two books. I thought at the time that I was as ready as I could ever be. Hell, I'd done an online creative writing course. I was basically Hemingway. Now obviously this was a fucking stupid thing to think. But hey, I was young, dumb and full of confidence. I remember the moment vividly when I realized something that I had been refusing to accept. Three words that, ironically, would give me more motivation than anything else I had ever experienced. Motivation to improve my craft, hone my skills and train those writing muscles. Three words that I croaked out with my face and my hands. My writing sucks. It was a hard truth because it was actually a little more complex than it sounds. Did the stories I wrote suck? No, I don't think so. Was I a bad writer? Again, if I may be so bold, no, I don't think so. But the writing itself definitely sucked. You may be wondering how specifically did my writing smell like brick layers undercarriage. Well, let me dot point it for you. The pacing was too rushed. The protagonist skipped from major conflict to major conflict, like Sonic the Hedgehog at a music festival. Gotta go fast. The opening exposition was cheesy and more dense than fantastic force, the thing flying into a black hole. What the fuck is that? The romance was the worst part. It was a crucial element to the story and the major protagonist's driving motivation, and it was barely existent. The romance in my writing was warfare than a fart from a grandmother in a summer's afternoon breeze. Delightful. I was writing the third book and what was to be a four book series when what I had done became too much and I decided finally that it needed to be put down. At least until I could do it better. Despite what you may think, this is not just a video roasting myself. I'm much too fragile for that. Please don't tease me. I wondered for a while if maybe I wasn't cut out for this. I thought about perhaps some other careers I could aspire to. But none of them gave me that tingling and then the regions that writing does. Writing was what I wanted to do. Still. Like I said, those three words were actually a blessing. After I finished my pity parade and my daily cry, it dawned on me. My writing sucks. So I'm going to get better. Like an uplifting montage in a straight to DVD movie, I sat my ass down and started bookmarking courses, books, pages and everything I could find that would show me exactly where I went wrong and what to do next. I read over my bad work and made notes on what I could have done differently. I read books from within the genres I wanted to write, taking more care than ever before to take note of what bits made me feel something and why they did. Here's the thing. It wasn't about becoming the best writer that I could ever be before I finish a book. Hell, I'm definitely still not the best writer I could ever be. In fact, I doubt I ever will be the best writer I could ever be. But that's not the point. The goal I set for myself that day, the day I realized my writing sucked, is the same goal that I have today. And that's just to be a better writer today than I was yesterday. It's not about being the best writer I could ever be when I finish my next book. It's about being the best writer I can be at that point in time when I hit publish. If I could go back in time and visit the younger, more naive me, I would give myself the backhand of a lifetime and remind myself that I didn't know it all. I wasn't ready then because I'd stopped trying to improve. I didn't think I needed to anymore. Then of course I would start a two-man acapella band with myself because that would just be dope. For now I have a folder full of story ideas and most of my days are spent fantasizing about all of the different ways that they could play out. I have planned a psychological horror about a man confronted with his misdeeds and the hell that they bring with them. A horror anthology exploring all of my own personal phobias. An epic fantasy about two bandits as closest brothers who escaped prison and get dragged into a world-changing struggle. A surreal contemporary about a boy whose best friend lives within his dreams. I will be finishing a book this year and no matter how good or bad people end up thinking it is, I'm just excited to know that for the first time I really did give it my all. I hope this video doesn't feel too cheesy. I'm not trying to be like an inspirational speaker or anything like that. That's not my thing. I've just been thinking a lot pretty recently about how differently my thoughts on writing changed from before and after that exact point, that exact moment I remember where I realized that my writing sucked. A lot of people would think that realizing your writing sucks could only be a negative thing. So I just wanted to make a video talking about how it could be the best thing for your writing coming to that realization. I'd love to hear if you guys have had any similar experiences. Leave a comment below. As always, thanks for watching guys and I'll see you in the next video. Catch ya.