Writers, please don’t bash your “early work.” There’s this idea out there that you’re bad, bad, bad, and then it’s like a switch is thrown and you suddenly toggle to good. In my experience it’s never like that (although publishing companies and famous writers with short memories sometimes like to give that impression). It’s more that everything you write is true to who you are at that time. What you write now will make you cringe in five or ten years and that’s ok. If you are writing honestly then it’s no less true to you and no less valuable than the thing from five years ago that makes you cringe now.