Saturday, March 04, 2006

My Writing Weaknesses

Okay, time to fess up. We all have em. Writing weakesses. My CP's, current and former, know what mine are. And they don't know how lucky they are they didn't get me six years ago. As one of those "non college going writers" (No, never been, don't really want to go, though it has crossed my mind) I am a bit weak on mechanics. Comma's confuse me, tenses befuddle me, and the thought of reading Strunk and White tortures me. I am big enough to confess this. I am MUCH, MUCH better. But some spellings will always slip my mind. It's like a missing synapse. For instance, how many times will I have to write nessesary or consicous before I just know what they are instead of having to stop to think.? By this time, I think never.

I actually got denied entrance into a YA Crit group when I started six years ago. Yeah, I can see why now. Six years of writing 9-14 articles a month can be quite the education. But fiction writing is vastly different and it has been a learning experience.

What else am I weak on? Patience. I have shot myself in the foot more than once because I am impatient. My tendency to jump the gun has cause me more humilation than I can count and yet I never seem to learn my lesson there. Perhaps its a sign of immaturity? Or a character flaw? This has impacted my career and my writing.

I have capital issues. I capitalize random letters in a sentence. I do it both printing and typing. No one knows why.

Speaking of typing, I don't know how to type the correct way. My fingers actually rest on the right keys, but I have to look most of the time cause I have an unruly left hand. It won't do anything right. I use two fingers on my left hand, the pointer and the middle finger. I will use the ring finger on occassion for the shift key. But mostly my right hand does all the work which is why it is aching right now. This typing style is also why I write fmaily that way and form (supposed to be from) Wierd.

I have dyscalcula and my daughter is dyslexic so I think I have some left/right brain issues going on. My son is a lefty but he does a lot of things with his right hand and I am a righty who does a lot of things with her left hand. (I find brain stuff like this fascinating)

I have more weaknesses, but my weird brained kids need to get to the rink. Ice princess has to practice for an hour and then teach for two and my son has to work all day. Which means Mommy gets some quality alone time with the keyboard! YAY!

What are your writing weaknesses?

3 comments:

Elisabeth Naughton said...

Oh, geez. Where do I start?

I think it's safe to say the more you write, the better you get. I know when I started I had POV problems, comma issues, way too much emphasis on backstory. Luckily, my mechanics have greatly improved thanks to an English teacher CP, but a lot of it also has to do with just writing writing writing.

There are a lot of multi-pubbed authors out there that don't have a clue about commas (or, their editors don't have a clue about commas). Keep in mind it's not always the mechanics that gets you published, but the story you can tell.

Diana Peterfreund said...

I can never remember the difference between certain words. Like affect and effect. And imminent and eminent. I always have to look it up.

I also "write by ear" which leads to some truly groan-worthy homophones making their way into my text. For instance, I almost wrote "right by ear" up there.

Rachel Vincent said...

I have pretty good grammar (watch, now that I wrote that, I'll probably mess something up horribly), and I'm okay on mechanics. My true weakness is plotting. I can write fifty thousand words of nothing but characterization, colorful description, and backstory. I know; I've seen me do it. Then trash it.

I sometimes have to remind myself that every story needs an actual...well, story.