If you’re scared it’s cringe, you might be onto something honest.

The cringe feeling usually shows up around sincerity rather than around bad work. What makes you wince is having meant it, because meaning it is unguarded and irony is armour. That flinch is a decent signal, since it tends to appear exactly where you stopped hedging. Work that cannot embarrass you is often work that was not risking anything.

Keep the line, the drawing or the verse that makes you wince, and sit with it for a day before you cut it. Show it to one person who will not laugh at you for trying. If they recognise something in it, you had the right instinct and the wrong fear.