There are many aspects to writing, and it's possible to be proud of one of them and not another. I'm very proud of my prose style. I love reading my own sentences and paragraphs, admiring my sentence rhythms and imagery even years later - that's probably the reason I write. I also love my characters - I think I'm really good at characters, and they're very vivid on the page. But I have serious flaws that I'm working on. My beginnings are terribly slow, my climaxes are mismanaged, I do too much telling rather than showing, I have pacing problems. I'm working on all that. I've heard I don't describe enough. Et cetera. I know my fiction needs work, and I'm not proud of those aspects that don't work. But I love reading my own stuff. I love my sentences ...
