Would you like to join the Insecure Writers Support Group? All writers are welcome here. We post monthly about our hopes and fears. Thank you to Alex Cavanaugh for bringing together this supportive community.
This month’s co-hosts deserve applause! Shannon Lawrence, Diedre Knight, Liza, and Pat Garcia.
August 5 question – As a writer/author what is something you regret? Or something that you wish you’d done differently in your writing process?
Regrets…I’ve had a few… *croons Frank Sinatra*
One regret? Failing to learn more about the craft of writing before releasing my debut novel. I wrote With Good Behavior in third-person omniscient POV, not as a deliberate choice, but as a default style for the fan fiction that sparked my writing career. This point-of-view has quite a few limitations, especially head-hopping. And my novel hopped like a bunny on crack! (Here’s a post about omniscient POV.)
The small liberal arts school in Ohio I attended for undergrad — Kenyon College — has a strong literary tradition. While I did take a few English courses, I wish I had signed up for more, especially creative writing. I also wish I had gleaned more wisdom from fellow writers (like the wonderful ones in IWSG) earlier in my career. I appreciate fellow author Darcia Helle educating me on POV.
There are probably quite a few other things I could’ve done differently. For the most part, though, I believe I made the best decisions I could with the information I had at the time. That’s the thing about regrets–we view the past through the unfair lens of hindsight bias.
I’m grateful I found a small publisher in 2010 as well as made the leap to self-publishing in 2014. I couldn’t have improved my writing skills without first making mistakes along the way. The small successes I’ve experienced are due to lessons from countless failures. (Speaking of bouncing back from failure, I loved the movie Young Washington.)
Jennifer Lane Books 
The unfair lens of hindsight bias – I’ ll remember that, and also. try to remind myself of one or two real achievements,
Constant self promotion – make that any self promotion, just isn’t me, though I’m still mystified by my GP’s observation regarding a serious ongoing problem…Even he has the weird idea that I’d glass half full and more,,
Not in the least creative – or paid, but this year, I have been able to contribute to an official ( govt) investigation of the quis custodiet kind. ,
And POV ? This time, after taking a book apart and trying to reassemble the piecesm , I decided on an eleven year old protagonist.
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Yes, we look back with knowledge that we didn’t have at the time – so, how could we know differently?
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I didn’t know what I was doing when I started writing either. Fortunately, I paid for a critique at my first SCBWI conference, and an editor at Highlights Magazine explained my mistakes.
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Mistakes are the building blocks of growth. I love reading everyone’s perspectives on their journey, but the one thing that sticks out consistently is that we BECOME based on our experiences.
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This writing business has definitely been Learn-By-Doing for me! I’m also grateful to have a small publisher who supports my work. The shift away from only having the big guys as possible routes to publication has been so exciting.
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So interesting that you wished you’d taken more classes. I was an English major, and I am glad for all the literature classes, but I avoided all the writing/creative writing classes, because I didn’t like the professors and the one I took in high school was just about poetry. However, I did take a phenomenal class from a community college in my late twenties. That was about the novel and it got me started.
And I think POV is one of the hardest things to master.
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All of us need to realize the importance of making mistakes in success. It is so true, what you said.
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Yes, hindsight bias can make it hard to look forward or see what was gained by those past mistakes. But those mistakes get us where we are now!
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We learn more from failure than from success 🙂
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