Is it just me...

Lots of choices for worst. Try this: http://www.abctales.com/node/511034 I mean, it's just utter bum. And there are so many more... I actually don't feel that cringy about old, crap stuff I've written - not sure why not. Maybe I should.

I looked at my introduction page there and thought i was ont he wrong persons. I reckon the most people who write do this. And what about juts life. Things you say and then forget you said but others remember *gulps*.

I try not to read over my stuff too much because I'm continually changing so the way I write continually changes...I mean, when do we stop editing? The worst thing I've ever written will never be seen on this website, but the worst thing I posted, I think, is Fish Tales...I still think its a neat idea, but very sloppily written. My best? - I like Cheap Thrills, but it too needs work. And Enzo, answer your own questions: best and worst?

Makes me cringe? Ooh most of it - pick up old pieces of writing very gingerly whilst hovering around the waste paper basket (actually I'm going to buy myself a shredder for that very purpose). The fact that I don't appreciate it as bad at the time of writing, terrifies me. Some things I'm oddly fond of though. Favourite phrase: '...your milk will come in and spray up his nose with the ferocity of a decapitated water hydrant.'

I look over my stuff quite a lot, this is because a) I almost always make mistakes when I write thus need constant editing and b) because my vocabulary is always changing, I may now have a better way to express something than I had a few years back. This however always causes me to cringe. My writting is very personal and so it evokes the feelings that I was feeling at the time when I wrote it, and because it is almost always quite dark I always feel exhausted after reading it. Although, there are particular pieces that I never read or edit, I have some poems that I only have read twice in my entire life, 'You said, I said' is one of them, is just one of those things, you don't feel the pain anymore but can't bring yourself to re-live that moment ever again. I don't have a favourite poem, I always feel that it is always a work in process, posted here so that is easily acessible for more editing! Although I am a sucker for lines, sentences of some kind or another. One of my favourites is this little passage from one of my poems: "Poets are those that seek answers in the darkness. I seek to be God, to be known, to be knowledgeable. I seek to be merciful, to be playful and to be misunderstood. To be above time, above law, above nature." Not particularly well written but I just love it! Worst poem? Well, the entire 'Growing Up' collection, it was written a long time ago when I was 17 and although it felt right at the time I don't like most of the poems in it at the moment (although this may change I only re-read the collection yesterday!)

I'm rather fond of the line I wrote in one of my latest, 'The Man on the Train'... "His words... thickened the air between us like social cornflour." *** smug grin *** :-) * P * :-)

Worst things I wrot: i) Clearly, 'Come Into The Light, Assassin' ii) 'Hen Goes Apeshit' Best things I wrot: i) any of the numerous occasions where an object has been spinning 'like Heero's steam-powered whirligig'. ii) "Then! Sudden as a damning word!"

Whilst you have written many great lines, Jon, 'Then! Sudden as a damning word!' will always have a place in my heart. It's a classic. My favourite line of my own stuff, at the moment, is: ‘We’re inside a huge inverted fly, Jones. You better have a damn good explanation.’

WORST: Football Daze The Long Half of the Wishbone BEST: Something to be Proud Of Wonderful NEEDS IMPROVING: Brothers

That's tough. Probably my best piece I've written is Ice Harvest , Lucky, That Long Black Train MY worst? Easily any of my attempts humor or my story a Broken Man My best lines? "Lucky? Oh sometimes, sometimes I don't think so." "It's important to keep a balance in life, yeah a balance, because the person who wants too much, risks losing everything, of course the person who wants too little, can end up with nothing at all." "I am the gunslinger. I am the soul stealer. My hand is the master. My gun is its slave. I am the gunslinger." Probably my favorite quote of all time would be from the movie The Usual Suspects.--- "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exsist." I really don't think you should be going around the hospital dressed as death.---Let's get one thing straight, I thought the cop was a prostitute.---HOMER SIMPSON

Yep - mostl ines from The Simpsons; how do they keep up such a high standard over the years? Homer's in a strop and wants the emergency services: "Hey operator, gimme the number for 911" is a particular favourite. Bart to Homer: "TV taught me more about life than you ever will." I'm sure Marshall Mcluhan would have loved that one. And as I walk everywhere and hate public transport this appealed to me; after Homer couldn't use his car for some reason and being advised that he could take the bus: "Public transport is for losers!" My stuff: 'His eyes were beadier than an abacus'. And the first letter I ever sent to The Guardian which they printed a week later. I missed it and it was only a girlfriend who saw it and told me. It was about Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses hoo ha. They were publicly burning books in Bradford; evoking Germany in the 30s - and look what that led to - Cat Stevens came out in favour of the death sentence on Rushdie. This is the same Cat Stevens who sang about love, tolerance etc. now known as Yusuf Islam who was recently cleared of incitement to terrorism. Mmmmm. And we'd just discovered a bloody big great hole in the ozone layer; so I wrote. 'Might I cause further distruction to the ozone layer if I publicly burned my Cat Stevens records?' The crap stuff? Loads.

Best story? I've a fondness for "Whipping Post" - I spent ages in research, stayed up half the night for a week writing it, and it's both my longest story and most circulated one. Worst? I wrote a children's story which had completely the wrong tone, far too preachy; I deleted it altogether. Amazingly its lead character was called "Wirral The Squirrel" and if I'd posted it at the time I'd be able to sue Paul McCartney for nicking my ideas. Well, I could try.

Ok, to answer my own question: Best thing I've written: Either 'And that's what an owl would do', the first part of 'Anamysztike' or 'Bedtime in Winchmore Hill'. Worst: Easily Phoenix (shortly to be overhauled) but I also disike In God's Image. I actively hate a lot of the paragraphs that lead up to the last lines of my stories. Best line: "I arrived in Madrid in the evening, local time." Fave Simpsons quote: Homer produces a christmas carol (abusing Flanders), which gets played on the radio all the time. Homer is annoyed, "I've grown to hate my own creation. Now I know how God feels." Enzo.. www.thedevilbetweenus.com