Meditations On Some Really Bad Writing

... So I've been writing for close to twelve years...

To tell the truth, after the first five years, it was pretty much habit. In reality, the writing that I put a conscious effort into is a really small percentage of the multitudes of notebooks cluttering up my bedroom. The early stuff (and even some of the later stuff) is filled with Mary-Sues, flimsy plotlines, an amazing quantity of Les Miserables fanfiction, and some really shitty writing in general. This is why I don't revisit my notebooks too often; I feel like a bad writer when I do.

At the same time, however, I am too much of a pack rat to burn up these notebooks. What if there's something in the pile of crap that's actually a really good idea? What if I lose it forever? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I've scheduled myself in for a masochistic week of rereading my prepubescent HP-positive (Harry Potter positive) fantasy stories, the angst, the blatant Mary-Sue with the golden eyes and the trump card of immortality up her fluffy sleeves, and the characters lifted off of Victor Hugo who are by now grotesque, slasherific caricatures of their former (awesome) selves.

The really sad thing is that I sincerely believed that what I was writing was really good. I remember constantly rereading my own work for days on end in pure awe that I could write anything so full of win. At least I didn't share my work with anyone, or my ego would be extremely compromised right now.

Maybe bad writing is part of the process to become a better writer. The only thing that really concerns me is that I would have been happy writing Mary-Sues and angst forever, but somehow, through some twist of fate, I've evolved a little. My characters practically register negative on the Mary-Sue litmus test, and I only angst when the situation calls for it. Um... I still write slasherific Les Miserables fanfiction (that sort of bad habit really does die hard), but I've normally got the sense not to post it anywhere where people can blackmail me about it. Lately, when I write compulsively, I start with a character or interesting scenario and work from there. Before, I started with someone incredibly wounded (or well-dressed) and angsted from there.

I can still remember starting my first-ever notebook with a plot and some characters in mind (before, my notebooks were some amorphous fantasies and needlessly detailed journal entries). My protagonist was a vampire named Gwynis who was rather bitter about being turned into a vampire by a slutty bitch with a really conspicuous name (Lunis Amaris, I'm afraid). So she decided to go on a journey to kill her creator (and herself in the process), and along the way met a soppy witch named Elkaldu and a genie named Moonstone. I must have filled up three considerably sized notebooks with Gwynis' journey and subsequent adventures. She died, but she got resurrected, became beautiful later on (she was ugly as sin), fell in love with the genie, died again, became mortal, got tortured by Lunis Amaris' creator (she'd torched Lunis Amaris in her first outing), nearly died again, and then lived happily ever after.

I'm still really embarrassed about this chick. She had a really bad attitude, angsted like Edward Cullen on Anne Rice pills, and was pretty useless in a fight, if I do believe. Despite her I'll-do-it-myself tick, she was almost a typical damsel in distress. It was insane how much I messed with her 'character'. Though she was in an alternate world, she popped up in our Earth and other universes in a lot of my other stories with some pretty scary insistence. She had charmed jewelry and sunlight didn't fry her. To my credit, however, she hated silver and would avoid it at any costs. Never mind that the one time she was owned by silver she was immediately resurrected.

All right, I've bared my soul about my bad writing. What do you guys think? What was your most outrageous Mary-Sue? Plothole? Very convenient coincidence? We all have them. Feel free to share.