Sunday, September 13, 2009

What Are Your Writing Weaknesses? Plus, Linky Love Sunday!

While I've been toiling over my new WIP, the plot, the outline, and developing my characters, I've come to realize a few weaknesses. I'm talking little, tiny flaws that seem to pick on me every time I begin a manuscript and build to one big hangnail of an issue if I let it.

One of them, I've noticed, is my love of apostrophes. I get wild with them, and my brain automatically thinks any word that has an "s" ending needs them. Like, my love for apostrophe's. I hate it, it drives me nuts, but with my realization of the problem, I've gotten better. Apostrophes Anonymous has helped tremendously.

I'm also not the best speller and there are a handful of words I constantly misspell (or use incorrectly though it is spelled right). The great thing is, when you take writing more seriously and treat it as a job, you tend to catch onto your natural weaknesses and get better at training your mind *not* to do it.

Do you have any flaws that like to come out and nag on you, slowing the process of writing down (if not terribly, just annoyingly?)

And I wanted to end this with a few links I feel compelled to share. One place growing with a plethora (I love that word) of writerly and agently info is Getting Past the Gatekeeper, an agent-run blog with humor, wisdom, and great info. Their latest blog "Author Mistakes You Won't Make" is sadly humorous (and honestly astonishes me at some things people do) as well as informative. They are also doing a contest (and I'm not sure when or if it has ended but hey, give it a look-see) for those writers out there querying. It is here and you offer up questions you'd want the agent to ask at a conference. If she uses them, she'll give your query a read along with some personal feedback. How awesome is that?

And last is KT Literary's blog run by "Daphne", or really, the boutique agency's lead agent, Kate Schafer-Testerman. She's got a great sense of humour, and next to a really cool obsession with shoes, has some great insights on the industry, plus, you can send her an e-mail (to Daphne, not to her query e-mail) and ask her questions to answer on her blog, or to even critique your query letter on her blog.

And that's it for today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, folks!


3 comments:

  1. My weakness is an overriding need for perfection. Even though I know that there is no such thing, I second-guess my word choices far too much. I've tried to get better about it, but there are still times when I completely stop and spend minutes at a time figuring out exactly how I want to say something.

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  2. I do that to an extent on my final revision(s). More a combination of picking on the sentence structure and word choices, or word placement where I move one word from here to there. Silly, tedious things that would devour me if I let them.

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  3. Ditto what Chris said. I can't get past this feeling that it has to be perfect right out of the gate.

    And then transitions (from scene to scene) are hard for me, as well as finding a good balance between narrative and dialogue. I feel like, separately, they're good, but I sometimes have trouble making them work together.

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