Ugly Writing

It stinks to be on a roll with your project only, for some reason, to stop and feel like you have come to a horrifying realization.

Everything that is being written is terrible.

This is a miserable struggle I am going through now. I feel the idea of my novel is strong, the timeline/outline feels good, and the characters have a purpose. But there feels like there is something lacking and it is lacking terribly.

It is a haunting insecurity that is affecting the completion of my project. I'm already into third edition of my book, so I would like to have it completed. But I find myself hating my writing so much. It doesn't feel polished enough to the point it hurts to complete a chapter because it is so ugly to look at. And I can't just not look because I am fully aware what I am writing and am aware of how bad it is.

Maybe before I wasn't paying much attention to it. I just wanted to complete my book so I can start the quest for publishing. Not sure if I've put more attention on to the actual writing itself now or not. But something has triggered a reaction from me and made me aware something is off.

It's not so easy to keep writing when the foundation of the book feels so weak and boring. It feels like the writing is so drawn out over nothing. But removing the details no longer feels like my writing style. Yet my current writing style feels ugly and not worth publishing.

What can change? Should something change? I feel the view of personal ugly writing is probably very overwhelming and crippling to a lot, if not most, writers. It is an insecurity that grips the hand tightly and it becomes a struggle to write anything.

I find that I'm not so upset that my writing may be bad now. While the idea does hurt, if it is confirmed I don't find the news that horrible. What is frustrating is being unsure what to do about it. How to get better? Do I just continue writing? Do I ignore the doubt or is it something that should be dealt with now?

There are so many confusing turns. It's painful to move on cause the writing feels to be feeding off bad preceding chapters but going back might earn more set-backs and doubts.

What would you guys do? How would you face this situation? Any advice would be much appreciated to hear and to spread to more around who are going through similar insecurities!