I regret being published. I should have waited until I was ready instead of rushing things

Post the story

I think he's right, man. You've obviously never written anything. I've written plenty of shit I now cringe at or regret. I would be horrified if I had that stuff and had of associated with my name. All writers deal with this type of anxiety. Nietzsche used to gnash his teeth in anxiety over Zarathustra feeling it was utter shit (and other times obsess over it's greatness).

OP, you gotta start publishing under pen names now.

had that stuff published*

That's what I initially thought with my own story, but then putting that short story on my resume helped me get an internship at a magazine company.

The truth is that most people won't care.

OP here. I actually considered writing this under a pseudonym, but stupidly didn't. I do intend to publish any future stuff pseudonymously though. Seeing my name on online really isn't a comfortable experience for me anyway. Being tied to an identity is pretty scary, and I understand why Pessoa chopped his up into 100 or so people.

I realize that the number of people who have read the story is only in the dozens or hundreds, and I'll have to just toughen up and accept that I need to improve. But now there's a kind of burden to publish more simply to have my name associated with other stuff in order to hide this story or knock it out of sight, and this duty doesn't feel very "ethical" in an artistic sense. It isn't a noble motive.

the only thing i regret about being published/winning a national contest was the huge fear of not living up to that first success

This.
OP, if you won the contest honestly (you're not a personal friend of the panelist, you didn't plagiarize) then quit beating yourself up.
If you hold the copyright then upload a corrected version online and blog about the lesson you learned. Simples!

Get over it. Allow yourself to learn a valuable life lesson here. You were good enough to be published to begin with. You have enough self-awareness to see your own limitations. In order to see them, odds are your skills have objectively improved.
So keep moving forward and quit being so damned insecure. Otherwise that insecurity will be what you regret more later on, trust me.

It isn't that simple I'm afraid. The story was also included in an anthology in print form. I sent over various corrections, which the competition organizer promised would be corrected upon publication. But when I saw the printed version I realize not a single one of my many edits had been made. It was quite disappointing, both for myself and for others probably who saw a mistake every several sentences and probably felt they had been fooled by wasting their money on it. I don't understand why they would publish an anthology and attempt to sell it to people without considering these errors. But I suppose that was my duty, and one I failed to fulfill.

Thanks for the advice.

An analogy I use to understand the role of the author in relationship with the reader is that of a driver on a dangerous mountainside which promises fantastic views if navigated correctly. The drive must know which small (but dangerous) roads to take and how to know where the road is likely to give way, and must also be aware of what vantage point the reader desires to reach. But in order to make the journey there enjoyable for the reader he must assure them, by careful driving, that he is in control and that they can sit back and not worry about falling off the mountainside and can appreciate the changing scenery while anticipating the destination. But a poor driver, an insecure or careless one, causes the vehicle to lose its footing on the cliff side, or drives in a haphazard way which sends his passengers bouncing and spilling their food, and leaves them so physically sick that once the top of the mountain is finally reached all they want to do is get back to the lowlands again and search for a better guide. I just feel like I've announced myself as a shitty guide, and blown my chances of ever redeeming that. Like Trump and many others say about chokers, in that if you choke once you're always a choker. I really am rather persuaded by such theories of a person's "essential" capability.

You've gotta get over it, perfectionism KILLS artistry every day. So what if you spent another month on it? With the mindset you have, you'd end up with an overwrought piece of shit and you'd be blind to that fact through the time and energy you've expended on it.

It's not so much the quality of the writing itself, or anything about the story. It's more that there are glaring misspellings, omissions, grammatical mistakes and so on. I did spot them and sent several lengthy emails to the organizer asking that they be corrected before it was published, but although they said they would be in the end they weren't. Just embarrassing.

Maybe the publisher just didn't want to spend money editing a shitty short story winner
You've gotta move on, if you're "published" then it means you've got a foot in the door for better work

>humble-bragging this hard

literally fuck your own face

Not my intention. I guarantee if a dozen of Veeky Forumss aspiring writers had submitted I'd have been BTFO.

Maybe, but it was literally a Word document and I sent over corrections that were easy to make. It just sucks that they kept encouraging me to send over further edits, only to ignore them all when it came to printing the story. It's just a very intense experience to go from being an utter nobody posting on Veeky Forums to having your name and photograph associated with a story that is riddled with errors. I kick myself all the time for rushing things and being so lax with editing.

think of yourself in five or ten years and ask yourself whether you'd rather be looking back and thinking "I'm glad I carried on writing, that early story was really pretty bad but I've learnt a lot, hardly anyone reads that specific story and those who do know my later work and maybe even enjoy seeing my growth as a writer" or "that one story I wrote years ago wasn't perfect, I'm a shit writer, Donald Trump was right and that's why I don't write any more, but sometimes I really wish I still did..."

I understand the practical approach I have to take, I was posting this thread mainly to warn other relatively young people not to rush and end up embarrassing themselves. As for publishing anything else, I mean it's by no means a given that I will be able to do that.

>As for publishing anything else, I mean it's by no means a given that I will be able to do that.
why not? you won a short story competition, so you must be able to write half decently. if you can get published with a piece full of spelling mistakes I'm sure you can get published with better work.

Are there any short story competitions for more experimental prose?

Kys

Post story faggot

Not going to do that as I'll be doxxing myself.

No idea sorry, but many magazines are open to that sort of thing.

Because it was by no means a star-studded, long-running, tuxedo-and-champagne kind of competition. I just realize that the step up from a relatively small competition to publishing a book etc is a big one.

I once read the collected stories of Arthur C. Clarke, which were arranged roughly in chronological order. It was interesting to see his writing evolve from clumsy imitations of Lovecraft/Poe/Wells to his own style. Writing is a career, not just a "passion" or "hobby", and since you won a prize treat it as a stepping-stone. In the future when people read your short story hopefully it will be in the context of your better later works, and they'll think: here is the embryo of a great author. Anyway, no one remembers an author for his earliest and worst work.

Which of his early works are you referring to?

It was in this volume:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Arthur_C._Clarke

The earlier stuff listed (Travel by Wire!, How We Went to Mars, etc.) is clearly the work of a spirited amateur.

it doesn't matter that it wasn't a big prize or anything. you published. you have grown, as a writer, tall enough to be let on to the log flume of published work. now you have to keep growing until you are tall enough to ride the rollercoaster of real artistic innovation.

your writing was judged as being better than many other people, try taking that at face value for a bit. you are demonstrably better at writing than you could otherwise be. now go and demonstrate that you can be better at writing than you are even now. publish again, and again, and again and don't worry about being perfect just getting better each time. until you have something good enough that the only people who even read your early work are critics looking for reasons to talk you down because they're jealous of your talent.

I am four years older than he was publishing those stories. This only compounds my embarrassment.

Borges' early stuff sucks. Keep your chin up kid.

Any links for reference?

If you're going to be an author you're going to need to grow a thicker skin. People will shit on your work for various reasons. The last thing you need is to beat yourself up over it as well.

I accept that, it would just be nice if they beat me up about things that a twelve-year-old couldn't point out as being bad, i.e. spelling and grammar.

No one knows grammar these days, and most people can't spell properly or will assume it's a misprint.

It doesn't. A Universal History of Infamy is his first book, Ficciones is his second book. So, what the fuck are you talking about, man?? His early poetry?

No

All of his juvenilia, the earliest things he wrote. It's bad.