I have definitely been lax on my own writing. Getting lazy and just letting it slide. A subtle reminder yesterday as I was raking the shelves in the used book store and came to a rack of books which were a dollar. Not a dollar used though. Dollar brand new. Huh- I leafed through a couple and definitely not worth a dollar. Hardly worth picking up, yet how can I criticize? How many books have I published? Or even completed?
So as a consumer I turned my nose up, as a prospective writer I first felt a little jealous, but as I considered it I realized what a shame it is that these other authors would be so desperate to be published they would let such low grade writing be put in the public. It's unmemorable surely, but if they go to a serious publisher and cite this book as an example of previously published writing they're sunk, tanked, shot in the foot. Do you suppose they had second thoughts after they saw it in print? Did the fact that the publisher didn't even offer a hardcover version not faze them? Did they sell the story without thinking and lose any control? Did they get paid for that story?
I worry that someday that might be the only way I'll ever see my work in print. That all those journals and notebooks stacked under my bed will offer nothing greater than a few stories or poems that sound co-written by first year high school creative writing students. Have I improved since then. I think so, but maybe like the authors of dollar books I've just started to delude myself. Begun to see something that wasn't there. It's too early in the day to continue on this branch.