The Best You've Ever Written

[sr71plt]

My best isn't one of the 11 green Es I can really point to and really got, either.

 

[jomar]

My best will be my Hugo/Nebula award winning sci fi short story. It's written, just need to tighten this and expand that.

Seriously, I read a winner and there's way better writers here...wondered if the win was political or a popularity contest.

 

[TamLin01]

"Doctors bury their mistakes, barristers argue about them, and politicians deny them, but the indiscretions of a writer's youth haunt him on bookshelves forever." - Lee Killough

Back in high school, I submitted half a dozen stories to an online literary magazine, a concept that was very avant-garde at the time. This was the Old Internet, pre-Google, so the notion that someone in the future would even want to look your name up on a search engine wouldn't even have occurred to most folks, so I wasn't at all worried about putting my full, legal name on any old thing floating around cyberspace.

Years later, those old stories still surfaced as one the top results on my Google name search. And they were fucking terrible stories. Because of course they were, I was 17 when I wrote them. This got to be a real problem after a while, because as a freelance writer I want people (employers) to Google my legal name, but I sure as fuck don't want them reading the angsty vampire fantasy I wrote sophomore year when they do.

With some diligence, I tracked down the old editor of that now-defunct but still-extant magazine and pleaded with him to remove the material. He was actually very accommodating about it. A couple of days later, when I related the story to a friend of mine, she gave me this bemused look and reminded me, "I do porn for a living; do you want to sit here and compare who has the most embarrassing memories haunting them on Google?"

That's the thing about life: You always think you've got problems, but then you talk to someone.

Anyway, to the topic at hand: I have any number of personal favorites, but 2-3 years later I'm always displeased with them. But I did write a story a year and a half ago called "Devil's Work" that I still like a bit, mainly because it's a fairly melancholy little thing that I didn't think anyone would like but that readers on various sites seem to respond to.

I'm also fond of an older story called "The Changeling Baby" simply because the comments I get about it are so consistently puzzled.

 

[NoJo]

None of my stories are hot, but most of them are cool

TBH I cant imagine why anyone here would want to read my stories, which aren't usually erotica at all.

But I have lots of H's and a few E's so I know I write pretty well.

I just re-read I Married My Sister and enjoyed it -- it's got a nice twisty plot.

But my best submitted story is definitely The Last Cigarette which has a low vote score but an even nicer, twistier plot.

 

[visioneer]

Every story is a "best of" when I'm working on it. As for those I've posted to Lit, I am most satisfied with 'Barn Dance' followed by 'Shock Wave.' For me, best is an amalgam of my personal satisfaction with the story and reader feedback.

 

[oggbashan]

Every story is a "best of" when I'm working on it. ...

That doesn't work for me. I know when I'm writing a better story, but I don't know whether it is one of my 'best' until several months later.

Once I post a story to Literotica I tend to forget it. It's done, finished. The Muses get off my back about that one.

Months later? If I remember it in detail, it was a good one. (Or an absolute stinker! ) If I don't remember it, it was an ordinary story.

If I remember it in detail years later, and do not think 'Did I write that?' then it was a good story.

If I think "WTF was that?" it was a stinker.

 

[ElizabethWest]

Mine are in PMs and not for public consumption.

 

[Areala-chan]

"Best" is subjective at, er, best. But for Lit's purposes, it's my only non-erotic story here:

https://www.literotica.com/s/four-little-words-1

It slides up and down the Top List depending on votes, and has largely settled into waffling between 7th and 10th month by month, but hell, if readers think it's the 9th best, or even the 90th best, story out of the over 3,700 in that category, I'm not going to argue with 'em and I'm quite proud of that.

 

[rgraham666]

My best on Lit is Librarian.

The best of my self published stuff is in On The Far Side of Darkness

 

[TxRad]

Mine are in PMs and not for public consumption.

Great shock but also great to see you again.

My best on Lit is Librarian.

The best of my self published stuff is in On The Far Side of Darkness

Another person that has been sorely missed.

 

[JayLikestoRead]

"The Bastard" (https://www.literotica.com/s/the-bastard-1) is probably my best. Like most of my really good ones, it started with a relatively simple concept, but there was a lot more space between the dots that I had to connect.

The same thing happened with "Centerfold" (https://www.literotica.com/s/centerfold-ch-01). At the end of Chapter 1, they arrange another visit, and I realized when I was writing the story of that second visit that the events in between would be fun to read about as well.

 

[ElizabethWest]

Great shock but also great to see you again.



Another person that has been sorely missed.

Hi Tx!

ROB!!!! It's been so long!

 

[FelicityJohns]

I have really enjoyed reading through this thread, and through the great stories. I agree completely with the phenomena of what I think my best is, vs. the pleasure of the masses. The best story I feel I've written to date isn't published here, as it's slightly genre-bending, or I just don't know how to categorize it. But it was published in my volume of erotica, and is available free of charge here:

Spent

I'm not sure why I keep coming back to it as my own favorite, other than it said what I needed to say. It fulfilled a need. It's an honest expression.

I keep trying to top it. I've not, as yet, but will keep trying.

 

[Kethandra]

I'm proud of the progress I've made in written dialogue, especially repartee.

https://www.literotica.com/s/nudity-is-for-the-birds

On this site, that is where I best 'knocked it out of the park.'

 

[rgraham666]

Another person that has been sorely missed.

ROB!!!! It's been so long!

Hey all. Just did a quick drive by, saw this thread and had to brag.

Truth be told I'm trying to get back into writing and I thought it might be good to go back to my roots.

 

[glynndah]

I have a couple I'm proud of:

Shopping for Sex Toys at Walmart.

Tango with a Vampire.

And this one. Not because it's especially good, but it is the very first one I wrote: The Watcher at the Window.