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Post by The Voice on Apr 7, 2016 12:33:56 GMT -6
It's hard to know what you don't know. (I won't delve into the realm of what we don't know that we don't know). Given what you DO know about your writing, what would you say is your greatest weakness? I still struggle with grammar and sentence structure and keep a copy of The Elements of Style by my side. I use too many cliches. My plots are often obfuscated. I tend to rush through my revisions. My stories often lack originality. (Geez, do I really consider myself a writer?) Having said all that, I know my greatest weakness. Perseverance. I'm great out of the starting blocks (hello cliche), but after a while, my mind grows tired and I will step away from a story. More often than not, once that happens, I won't go back and finish it. I have stacks of incomplete drafts that have a nice beginning, a clever second act and then... nothing. Where are your weaknesses? What have you done (if anything) to address them? On a final note, I give permission to all members to pester me to finish any projects I mention. I feel like George R.R. Martin sometimes so please, nag me. I think I need it. ~V
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Post by Yinglan on Apr 25, 2016 11:54:30 GMT -6
I agree, perseverance is definitely one of my weaknesses too when it comes to writing. I have a folder labeled on my computer "stories" and it's full of unfinished drafts, some are just one page or half-page and some are several stories combined (like a collection) and now that I'm looking back at it, I become super confused as to what I was thinking.
My other weakness may be the inability of coming up with different words. English is my second language and over the years, I've been lazy in the expansion of my vocabulary. So a lot of times when I'm writing, I find myself using the same words over and over and the annoying part is, the thesaurus often doesn't help me much either.
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Post by The Voice on Apr 25, 2016 15:51:52 GMT -6
I use a thesaurus regularly, but yes, it sometimes still doesn't offer what I'm looking for. I like Vocabulary.com as one tool for expanding my word understanding and usage. I also used to keep a list. Every time I would read or hear a word I didn't know, I'd write it down and look up the definition. Then if I felt I was being repetitive with certain words, I'd check my list to see if I had anything I could use instead.
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