Negative Feedback Is A Hero For Insecure Artists

A guide for overthinkers

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As a mentally ill barely-writer, I am still in shock as to what negative feedback did for my confidence.

Sounds weird, but see, I have always hated every piece of art created by myself. I am officially one of the worst criminals in the writers’ universe as the amount of trashed Word documents and torn pieces of paper in my past is… let's say a lot. You're probably imagining a certain amount, but it's more. I am talking about 8 years of writing created because I loved the process and destroyed because I hated the product.

I wasn't even telling people I wrote because I felt embarrassed I was doing something I was that bad at. That is until I stopped throwing away everything that I was writing, and I stopped because:

1. You cannot do something for 8 years, and not get at least a little better. So I might have seen a slight improvement, and the desire to destroy my precious pieces of mind was not that strong.
2. I was reading all these famous authors’ advice about keeping everything you write no matter how bad you think it is and I was like “Well, Veronika, you're trying to be an actual writer, why don't you listen to… I don't know, actual writers maybe?”
3. NO ONE'S GONNA SEE IT.