What is your greatest flaw as a writer?

Boy am I wordy.

My greatest flaw is feeling obligated to use every word I've ever learned. I already love description as it is but I'm a huge grammar fan. I'm amazed with the smooth adjectives like "glutinous" and "magnificent"- So much, I end up constructing sentences around words instead of WITH words. I've read and adored the workings of Edgar Allan Poe for so long, his wordy style has rubbed off. In these modern times, it's considered flooding your work with adjectives. I realize adjectives can be a great resource and a terrible addition at the same time. When I write, I often go back every few pages to reread what I've just written. I find many run-on sentences that look like lengthy monologues of a witty poet. It's sad really and I'm trying to catch up with these mistakes as I make them. Words being something I love, it's hard to point them out as I'm admiring their placement.

Bottom line, I'm too darn wordy and I bet my above rant has concluded this.

=P

Other than that, I'm a perfectionist so I have multiple rewrites and end up destroying things that were just fine because they left a hung-up feeling in my mind. Things are never "finished" or "good enough" to me and it can really take its toll on me and my work.

My hugest flaw is my perfectionism and the fact that I critique my work worse than anyone else. I have this one book that I've been working on for years. I never get further than the first chapter, though, because every time I go back to re-read what I wrote, I find minor errors, or think of a better was to get to the point, and I have to rewrite the whole thing. It is beyond frustrating!

I also usually don't know when to end one paragraph, and start another. I have gotten better at that, but I still get fairly confused sometimes.

Another problem is that I get writers block. A lot. It is so irritating trying to figure out where a story should go, and not being able to see past what is already written.

However, with all of these flaws and more, I have found, by reading past works of mine, that my writing has grown and matured. I actually use quotations, unlike in my beginning works, where all the dialog looked like the rest of the story. And the detail is better. So I am hoping that as my writing progresses, I will learn to better my flaws and become the amazing writer I want to be!

Best of luck to everyone else in your works, and many hopes of great success to you all!!!

~Jae

I'm an illustrator naturally not a writer but i'm planning on doing a web comic and have started a 'script' which is taking the form of a novel because it's easier for me as i read sooooo much.

I find punctuation hard as i'm not a writer. I'm finding making my work flow and sound good easy but trying to find the right places for punctuation with only up to year 11 english lessons is difficult. as i'm reading now i'm starting to note where the author uses puctuation, which i haven't done before.

I guess i'm finding the details pretty difficult too. I like character development so all the characters have relationships and problems to deal with as well as the main plot. i'm struggling to find the right places to add the details that are key without making them all come at the reader at once or too soon or too late in the plot. Putting the two together is difficult.

I also tend to write like the author of whatever book i'm reading. for example if i'm reading the bartimeaus trilogy my writing get very detailed but if i'm reading something like the demons lexicon my writing gets much less so. I didn't know this before i started so i'm finding it funny rather than annoying.

I guess i've just got to sort this writing stuff out as i go through.

PS. reading through chapters for mistakes gets really annoying, especially now i now have about 20 plus pages on word. which is nothing really is it compared to what the finished version will be.

My fatal flaw really refers to how I write more than what I write. I used to always show people things too early, or talk about a piece before I wrote it. This always killed me because then I would never write it - I'd built up the expectation and I wasn't free to change my themes as I worked on the story. Now, though, I have the opposite problem. I hardly ever show my work to anybody.

As far as the text itself goes, I often have trouble deciding where I want to go with a story, who I want to be as a writer. I'm not especially fond of some of my more postmodernist stuff (mostly because it becomes too personal for me to show anyone), but that's the direction most of my new ideas go. Hmm.. see above for that.

Honestly, there's been this problem for a few years. When I first started writing, my biggest thing was dialog, I wrote really great dialog. Over time, though, I got tired of it, and I stopped doing it. I wrote a couple of short stories with no dialog, and I developed a system to get around it, and it's not a bad system to employ once in a while, but I always find that I'm trying to put it in where dialog would work just as well.

I've always been a big believer in the idea that artists are a lot like magicians, though. You use sleight of hand, little tricks, to hide your weaknesses so the audience doesn't notice them. Obviously, though, you work on them because one day you won't be able to hide them anymore. So, I don't know.

EDIT:

Also, sex scenes. So, I work around them. Again, you tell me.

I think I have a few flaws, but one of my major ones is something similar to yours. I have this rule where I *have* to write for at least an hour every day. Sometimes I just don't feel like it but I sit down and force it out. I can tell when I do because my writing becomes very lazy. I have a habit of writing the bare minimum - almost like getting everything out in a huge rush before I forget - and then I have to go back over it and add some meat to it. I'm mostly like this when it comes to dialogue. I am very good at descriptive writing, but I can't seem to project that into my dialogue and so it sounds like the dialogue is horrid. I also have a tendency to re-edit everything before the book is finished and then I get stuck at a chapter re-editing it over and over again until I get stuck and can't get past it to keep going. Those are my flaws.

I have two that I can think of off the top of my head. One, I have trouble finishing things, even though I'm a perfectionist. I can sit there for ten minutes trying to find the exact word I want, but I can't finish some of the ideas I want to write. I might have the plot in my head, but it doesn't materialize, usually due to the fact that I'm on the first chapter, and my mind is already in the climax, and I find it hard to connect parts of a story rather than just writing from beginning to end, as the transition is awkward and sometimes I don't even want that part anymore.

The second would have to be my writing style, as it changes. I look back on stories I've written when I was in grade school or early junior high and I can't fix what I've written without destroying it, and I don't want all that time to go to waste. But the ones that are more recent are easier to fix.

I would say my greatest flaw is that my sentences are too long. Many people have mentioned this to me (my English teacher for example). I just find it hard to break things up so I cram everything into one block. Hopefully the more I write I'll improve at this.

Also, sometimes I find that my scenes don't flow, and I think that this one is more annoying that the long sentence one because I don't know how to fix it! I'm not a GREAT writer at this point, so I don't know how to make it better, but I love writing so none of these flaws will ever put me off writing xxx

Hmm...

Probably my worst flaw would be my inability to stay with an idea for more than a few weeks (Months at most). I find myself constantly becoming obsessed with an idea and as soon as it begins to develop well, I get bored of it and discard all my work on it.

Another one of my flaws as a writer would be my tendency to create shallow female characters, and have majority of the characters sound like carbon copies of each other with only minor differences. Over the past year or two I have gotten over this one, though I still have trouble with it every now and again.

The best and worst flaw I think I have as a writer would be my tendency to be critical of my own work to a ridiculous level. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing.

As a writer, I think the past few years have helped my writing mature a lot. I now understand that writing is a complicated process, characters need depth and realistic traits, and that originality is VERY IMPORTANT.

And, I think if someone is arrogant enough to think they have no flaws, as a writer or otherwise, then they probably have more flaws than those they think themselves above.

:)

Emma xx

I have been told by a reader that I add too much unnecessary information. I stare at my chapters blankly, unsure of what to edit out. I guess I'll figure it out in the next draft. And I try to have meaning in every conversation at this point. I sometimes still slip into 'I let my character's babble endlessness about nothing flaw.'

I also love adverbs if I'm not watching myself while I write description. I once had a love affair with the word 'slightly.' I swear, that word appeared in every other paragraph. I got tired of seeing it when I had my red pen out for my first set of chapters. I started writing swear words over the word. That's how annoyed I was with myself.

So, I have to watch myself with that. And just with ane adverb. I try to just use a plain ol' verb instead.

I'm sure I have more....my mind just won't let me think of anemore...

Oh, I would die without spell check. If we didn't have computers and still had typewriters, um...I don't know if I would have given up on writing or maybe just use bundles and bundles of error tape.

I also sometimes get stumped with commas. I just sit and stare at a sentence, debating if I should take in or take out a comma.

Great Question.

My main problem are dialogues. I can NOT get my characters to talk to each other in a natural way. So annoying. I mean if there is a teenager talking, I would make her or him sound so perfect with great grammar and everything...i mean when was the last time u hear a teenager TALK that way... My dialogues seem fake to me..

Then there is my concentration span. Not much longer then three minutes. At times.

That and the desire to make every paragraph prefect. Annoying.