My Own Worst Critic

The critiquing of myself has been the most challenging part of my writing. I always have more difficulty with the quality and flow of the work.  I enjoy fiction best since I can use my imagination, not real things.  There are writing challenges that reflect my personal experiences.  I struggle to explain my feelings but try not to sound too frustrated.  My life is boring, and I have been a failure in most of it.  I do try, of course, to improve, but still, openings are more difficult to find.  The positivity of everyday life was never my strong suit.  So, I entered the challenge with several stories about my mother, father, great-aunt, grandparents, and great-grandfather.  My stories always seemed flat, and I hated talking about my life because it often felt like a series of failures and disappointments.  For this critique, I wanted something I wrote that could never sound right. It is a section of my story named Switching Schools. This was about a time that was rather difficult but never came out in the emotion that I did not want.   It was not my most outstanding work, but I put it out there to only be read by so little. I do not mind that no one reads it, though. Here is the section of that work.

The new school was an adjustment. I have known my former classmates since grade school, and my hate has changed. They were nice enough, and a new set of teachers was a new challenge. I was somewhat accepted since they had been in the same class for so long. The lectures were more complicated, and my grades dropped significantly. I was still on a good average, though. It was a growing experience when things just did not get better. I was doing fine in most subjects except for French class. I was low on that, and the grade dropped from my last school. I was at the top or middle of my classmates with lower marks. It was also more prominent in student enrollment, and I had more competition for other roles, such as the plays. I was the main character at my last school, but this one was worse. After being an extra for my previous two years with no way to move up. High school was difficult enough to go through, and trying to make new friends was always complicated for me. I had a few successes but still made it through to the end.

First, to start the sentences' choppiness does not help.  The subjects were too quickly abandoned for another.  The overall subject is not terrible, but the presentation could be better.   I was trying to express my feelings, which have always been tricky in conveying the message. The feelings I was not going through were not shown throughout the entire paragraph.  I should have broken down the ideas in more detail to make them more understandable.  It was a quickly written one, probably with a deadline looming to make my mind more panicked.  It was still a good exercise to try to write but not nail the message of overcoming that I wanted to relate to the audience. My grammar is acceptable since I ran it through Grammarly at the time.  Still, the jumping ideas bother me when I read repeatedly, but my mind might have been in the wrong mode.   The progression of ideas is also out of order, with little to no connection between the paragraphs.  The more I read, the more it became another mundane task I rushed through to answer a challenge.  I can understand why this did not win. The story would have been better if I could explain my emotions instead of stating my circumstances and making it more interesting.  A lot is said, yet it is mumbled into my one paragraph. 

The risk shows how I feel.  After studying myself, finding the right words for my experiences is more complicated.  This was the problem with these challenges.   It does bring out the raw emotions of the time, though.  I have moved past those into adulthood. As the writing could be confusing, so was the time.  I think of those times and maybe my reactions.  I guess, in the end, we all have our weaknesses.  Not all my stories I love and would like to stay in the fictional realm for the adventure rather than the mundane everyday lives of most.  It did stretch me to look into myself and try to convey a less-than-wonderful time. 

Despite the critiques, I've always strived to improve my writing.  This work may not be my best, but we all have those. Still, all the disappointments have been invaluable lessons in expressing my emotions with words about my life.  My stories may not always fully show my thoughts and feelings as I have wanted, but they provide new possibilities for improvement.  It was a period of transformation and endurance that I'll never forget.   Being my harshest critic, I'm constantly learning and evolving to be better, a testament to the fact that there's always room for improvement through critique. The art of storytelling and writing is a quest for continual improvement. Ultimately, I am my own harshest critic. Still, I am continuing an unending quest to improve and be my best.