Is your writing "low quality"?

Turning off your inner editor | Writing like 50k pieces of junk | What is "real writing", anyways? | Growing as a writer

We all know I’ve been recommending The Most Dangerous Writing App for awhile now.

Well…I think I’ve been abusing it.

How, you ask? Well, I found that I was able to write the fastest in hardcore mode. So I wrote a lot of words in hardcore mode (in my one WIP, I probably have about 50k words written in hardcore mode. That’s the length of a complete novel).

here’s hardcore mode. super fun.

However…there’s a catch. In hardcore mode, you can only see the letter you’re currently writing. Which is great when you’re trying to turn off your inner editor, or if you have writer’s block when it’s 11pm and you need to write 9.374k words by midnight.

But…I realised I’ve been using it way too much. When I first did NaNoWriMo (in 2023), I would say I wrote about 70% in hardcore mode. That’s…a lot. Then probably about 25% with talk-to-text (never do this, guys! It’s actually cheating 💀)…and about 5% of actually “open the doc>start writing>finish writing”. Which I would consider is basic or normal writing.

I know the organisation itself isn’t great…but you have to admit that this is absolutely STUNNINGGGG!! And my winner’s certificate matches!!! 😱

So, I’ve been writing so much in hardcore mode. What’s the problem with that? I mean, you were able to write so much, wouldn’t you say that’s alright?

Well, my answer to that would be yes, if it was even average writing. But you haven’t read my hardcore mode writing yet.

making sure you know, I do *not* write horror. I do not know what was going on here. It was most likely written at 1am.

The first problem with this scene isn’t even the fact that everything is misspelled…why am I writing a horror story here? You do not need pools of blood in a comedy fantasy romance drama set in space, okay?

But anyway, back to my low quality writing. I think any sort of low-quality writing is fine…in small amounts. But this was my entire novel. (The all caps are notes to myself, haha.) Is that really how I want to be spending my time?

Everything was for the badge. I wanted to score 101%, get everything perfect, and have a great novel by the end of it.

But I think you need to have priorities. Last NaNo, my priority was to win perfectly.

This NaNo, my goal is to have a quality draft.

wondering what my talk-to-text writing looks like? look no further, cuz here it be. we aren’t even addressing the fact that i stole the octopus plant thingy from harry potter.

But, I still struggle with writing like normal, so I’ve been trying to write (still using TMDWA!), but just not with hardcore mode.

And look at how I’ve improved! I can’t believe it…I’m *actually* writing. I haven’t done this in awhile. (Remember, it’s not edited!)

context: my WIP is not set in the Star Wars universe. I just haven’t decided the name of one of my planets, and since it is similar to Coruscant, I’m using it as a placeholder name until I can figure a real one out.

So, my question for you today is…

have you ever found yourself stuck in a pile of low-quality writing?

And if you are struggling to actually get quality stuff on the page, I’d love to encourage you!

thank you for being here! It would mean so much if you could like or restack this post…