It's hard to get into a thread kleinbl00 has already bombed and say anything except "Yeah, what he said." But I'll try.

I would say, it doesn't matter what your opinion of your own work is. It really doesn't. The people whose opinion matters are the people who read it, the people who accept it and publish it in lit mags, the people who talk about it.

I almost always think my poetry is shit. I can churn out a poem that I am in love with - and by the way, being in love with something you have written is dangerous, I have learned to recognize it as a warning sign - and six months, three months, two weeks later I'll feel like it's shit. If I am in love with something I actually ask other people to rip it apart because I know not to trust my own judgment. Your judgment, especially if it is positive, just blinds you to the reality of what the work actually is. If you love something, throw it away and give it to the critics so they can tell you what a pile of dog shit it really is.

Your friends, unless they are writers themselves, are not going to give you an accurate opinion on your work. Yeah I put up original content on Hubski sometimes and sometimes people like it. It's nice, but - and no offense - it is empty. Most Hubskiers are not poetry aficionados. I really appreciate hearing from the ones who are. But a layperson's opinion on your writing is also not going to reflect reality-in-the-world-of-writing. Fuck, laypeople made 50 Shades of Gray a best-seller, and the Twilight novels.

Don't destroy it. Maybe you will hate everything you write. Maybe everyone else will still love it. Realize that no one's opinion matters except the person who wants to publish your work and the people who read it then and fuck, even then, Jesus had haters. You will too.

Opinions, all of them, good or bad, need to roll off your back like water on a duck's. Just keep doin' what you're doing because that's how you get personal satisfaction - from producing.

If you are at it to get satisfaction out of an audience that fawns over you then show it to your friends. (I don't think that's what you're at it for.) If you are at it to be happy then stop.

I second the Danse Macabre suggestion and also recommend Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. They are the two books on writing that I have been recommended by my guru as of any use. I have read both and agree.