Your Writing Sins

[J. S. Elliot]

Well, let's see.

1. Too many projects, AKA, the "Oh, Shiny!" Disease. I've gotten better about this in recent years, being that I now only have four priority projects, but I also have an ever growing mountain of back-burner ideas sitting in the cache. Nevertheless, the way my muse hops around can sometimes make it difficult to focus on even one of the four for long periods of time.

2. Can writing slow count towards this? I'm still not sure how to increase the productivity when I am writing other than starting good writing habits (which is difficult when you have several tests a week to study for), but, would like to increase output in my sessions.

3. Getting hung up on world building. I love world building, which makes it easy to put off the story itself until I have a considerable starting point. (On the flip side, this saves me time in stopping mid-paragraph to find new names.)

4. Being overly critical of the first draft, which I know also stunts my productivity. Perfectionism is hard to shake. :/

 

[Ryan_Crown]

3. Getting hung up on world building. I love world building, which makes it easy to put off the story itself until I have a considerable starting point. (On the flip side, this saves me time in stopping mid-paragraph to find new names.)

Starting to run into this one myself. Came to the conclusion that at least some world-building was necessary for my current WIP, but once I got started, the more time that I spend world-building, the more fun I'm having doing it! In the long run I think this will be a positive thing for my stories (since I want to write a full series in this world), but in the short term it does almost feel like procrastination.

 

[Gryphos]

I've realised something that might not technically be a sin, but it's been brought up to me. I use a lot of filler words. It can never be as simple as "It was cold". It has to be "However, it did indeed appear to be cold" or something like that.

 

[Ryan_Crown]

I've realised something that might not technically be a sin, but it's been brought up to me. I use a lot of filler words. It can never be as simple as "It was cold". It has to be "However, it did indeed appear to be cold" or something like that.

I run into that problem with wanting to add "certainly" or "absolutely" or "definitely" (or some other equivalent) into all of my sentences.

 

[Gurkhal]

I've realised something that might not technically be a sin, but it's been brought up to me. I use a lot of filler words. It can never be as simple as "It was cold". It has to be "However, it did indeed appear to be cold" or something like that.

I know that feeling. You've got to make your heart cold as gold to kill your darlings and get it right.