Writing Advice on How To Stop Beating Yourself Up
it's amazing how your writing improves the MOMENT you step away for a few months and then come back to look at it. the manuscript i was cursing and blaming for my lack of motivation to write, the thing I was calling stupid under my breath, the thing that i hated with everything i have, is actually a rather fun modern gothic murder mystery in a hotel for monsters with some much better horror descriptions than i ever thought myself capable of. sure, it's got its weak spots, but now that i haven't been staring at every line for months on end as i tried to drag out the last few sentences for every chapter out of the most reluctant corners of my brain, it's a lot less grating/annoying/bad.
the reason we tend to think that our original writing is stale/cliche/bad is because we keep having to reread it while writing without anyone to comment on it/remind us that what we think is weak might be someone else's cup of tea. we think it's something that we've read before/not that original is because we have LITERALLY READ IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN trying to finish writing it.
give yourself some slack and some time away working on another project; you'll be amazed at what you see when you come back