Do you like your own writing?

b) What do you like?

c) Who do you wish you could write like?

d) What professional writers make you think, "Cripes, I could do better'n that hack"?

Sometimes I like my writing, sometimes I'm appalled about what a USELESS, SOULLESS MESS THAT IT ALL IS. I will never live up to the perfection of Arial size 12 fully justified.

Other people tell me my writing is good. I like building up pictures with details. I think on a magazine with a lot of male writers my stuff is possibly noticably more feminine. I don't know.

I procrastinate terribly.

Other writers: I've always loved Gavin Hills. And currently? There was a phase where every time I was comissioned to write a feature Dorian Lynsky would have written it first and better and I would panic and start deleting things again. My then-boyfriend was a mate of his and bloody went and told him and I've hidden ever since. Sylvia Patterson has the bollocks to ask some truly odd questions. There are a lot of people, but my mind has just emptied and I can't think of anyone. Kevin Braddock. Ted Kessler.

However I feel that's all too easy. I suppose I'm better at talking about dance music than anything else, this is something that seems to have happened as suddenly as my liking for dance became an obsession. I think I would like to give political writing a shot, but more in a skewed jokey kind of way. I'm not into anything overly factual.

But to actually answer the question, I generally am unsure whether what I write is good or not, I end up hating it after I've read it a few times, and I'm really embarassed showing anything I've written to people, at least if I'm there when they're reading it. Friends always say it's good I guess, but then none of them are writers are they.....

I do my best, and I er....don't think I'll give up any time soon, so I guess that's something.

tony parsons, music writing, nick hornsby, early philip k. dick and jack keroauc (snoozefest/half of his work), william burroughs (I think we can all safely say that his writing is not writing) and I can definitely write better than a thousand clever post modern britass writers clogging the market with their lame unexplored ideas of books that get written up as genius and forgotten about the next month, only to be lingering outside of bookstalls in front of yer budgens for the next twenty years or so (see: alex garland, tesseract, alan warners entire back catalogue minus: movern caller series), irvine welsh (post marabou stock nightmares), will self (right, who called in burroughs, ghost writer) and finally, the hack or all hacks, dennis cooper (soon to be name dropped near a bar/tavern/steel and window encased london restaurant near you).

I don't write much any more. I rarely make public what little crafted prose I commit.

I don't like my inability to write descriptively about music. I seem to have about ten adjectives I cycle between.

I found that 102 Beats This thing interesting as a writing exercise, because if you're using that few words then the not being able to write descriptively thing shouldn't be as much of a problem.

Whenever I look at anything I've just written, or have written recently, I cringe with embarrassment.

Someone (can't remember the name sorry) said that they only write well after reading Wilde. I notice that I tend to mimic the style of whatever I've been reading, but this always makes me ashamed...parasitic is the right word.

There are a few opportunities with my writing that I'm having trouble attacking, mostly because I'm pretty spoiled and would hate the 'yes' of the opportunity changed into 'no' because someone didn't like the result of trying to take advantage (even though I know that's rubbish really, they've all seen my work).

As to handwriting, I'm happy to say that even if I wrote something totally genius in my own hand, style would always outweigh content.I made all the posters at college and hand-lettered everything. I've got a bit of a handwriting fetish and gave a current Observer staffer a work experience job on the paper because she had the most excellent writing ever. People with nice writing: my friend Carlos and all the other architects I know, my friend Chris whose punkblox haven't changed since she was 16, my mum, my cousin Kelly, and Nick.

And I hadn't done anything for a long time, and suddenly I feel the urge to start again. So I have. I think it's better this time. I'm almost pleased with some of it.

Collating thoughts is the big problem I have. I think I'm too lazy to structure things properly. Poetry appeals to me.

I wish I could write like Ray Carver, or Joe Heller, or Joe Brooker, or Roddy Lumsden. In the past 2 days I have discovered that I would sell my soul and my grandmother to be able to write like Mandee Wright.

my academic writing suffers from the glaring sense of disillusion i constantly experience AT NOT BEING PIERRE BOURDIEU. of course, now that he's dead, i stand a much better chance! fuck foucault!

Do I like it? I think it's rubbish, but I think that about everything I do, so maybe it might be kinda OK.

As far as fairly appraising my skills, I haven't written enough (in my mind) to distance myself from my "early years". There are a few lines here and there I like, though. (Gotta keep myself smiling somehow.)

tony: "man...you write crazy like a schizophrenic"

professor: "paul, if you typed up everything that would make you seem much more intelligent as your handwriting does not reflect your mind"

dustin: "is that shorthand?"

content be damned, i'm the paragon of style over substance.

Okay, that is a total lie but I have nothing new to add to my usual "my writing sucks" mantra.

Look, I craft my shit for maximum reader thrills because I don't want to sound like a robot....worse than robots are the twee style kids using no contractions trying to be odd and funny and shit with that horrible or not-present timing....."It is absolutely a wonder that I do not eat guava on sundays more often!"......come on kid, you aint bringing heat like this.....I gong your ass.

I'll be honest: about 70% the people on ILE are awesome writers, highly original and yall can work a room real nice......the leftovers? let's talk skills......they ain't got em like a newborn!!! haha, sorry, but I don't play this get-along-gang shit, if you're wack youre wack......I demand hijinks.

I'm OK.

Sarah with the caps...........is the best writer here. Some of you guys need to tweak your shit out and bring comedy like her, or at least be more rugged.

When I read a guy talk about music, I can usually tell what kind of porn he's into if into any at all, what type of comedy he likes, what kind of black people he is familiar with, and if he watches boxing or not......I can't figure girls out at all though.

She's up there in the pantheon, damn straight.

It isnt that I hate my writing so much, as I dislike it when I try novel format. I just can't do believable dialogue. So I go for the monologue - the rambling Joycean/Proustian kind of thing, and that seems hard to sustain over many chapters.

What is the point of reading something you have written? You already know what it says.

I am clutching at straws.

When I am ill, as I have been this week, I really dislike my 'writing' and think it is the work of the devil or something.

Have a habit of dropping personal pronouns for no reason too.

My actual writing itself... Sometimes I think it's absolute shit and I'm embarassed to have done it, but sometimes... when I get it right, when I really nail something, I'm my own favourite writer, but not in the sense of "I'm really good", more in the sense of "That's wicked, am I sure I wrote it?" I like to think I can capture a sense of energy and enthusiasm, but that it's not foundationless or stuffy. God knows what other people think. I need, soon, to stop writing record reviews and just write.

I dunno, you can do both. (I'm not trying to be flip and I see your point, it's just that for me I can switch between various modes easily enough -- also, unlike what a lot of people say about always *needing* to write, in otherwards that they can't not constantly get something out on the page or screen or whatever, for me those moments are few and far between. Partially I think a lot of energy and thought is sublimated into something like online communication and posting here, but I see that as no bad thing, it's merely a different medium.)