Education Seven Mistakes New Writers Often Make

New writers often put so much of themselves into the act of writing they fail to recognize when the writing itself falls short due to these seven common mistakes. Knowing your reader, evaluating both your weaknesses and your strengths as a writer, keeping your ego out of the words, doing your homework, picking the correct genre or style and knowing when to stop-all crucial for new writers to master along the path to professional wordsmithing. 1. Not knowing your reader. Get very clear about who your reader is. Get very clear about how that reader may play various roles in your writing career as a client wanting to reach a particular market segment; as a casual reader seeking information, education or entertainment; as a devoted fan who simply admires your facility with written communication; as a writing peer who shares a common interest in writing as creative expression, technical proficiency or personal path to self-understanding. 2. Underestimating your weaknesses as a writer. Beginning writer often make the same mistakes over and over. Are you a weak speller? Do you construct awkward grammatical phrases or figures of speech that are open to multiple interpretations? Do you mix your tenses, shift focus from first person to third person or something even grammarians don't have a name for? Are you too wordy? Not wordy enough? Fuzzy about which word or phrase to use that precisely makes your meaning clear? 3. Overestimating your strengths as a writer. Perhaps you receive positive feedback one day that someone really appreciated your last piece. That doesn't mean that you've nailed it! Writing is a journey with no real end. Some of us get better at is as we go along, and others only think they've completed the journey only to find there's far more vistas to admire and territory to explore. The best writers know when they are good and understand that there is plenty of room for improvement. Never think that you've mastered the art of writing-and never stop thinking that humility, gratitude, technical mastery and curiosity are (and should be) your constant companions on this journey. 4. Not getting your personality and ego out of the way. It becomes glaringly obvious when a writer's personality or ego gets in the way of the writing itself. Personality-driven writing is quirky and subjective, with an overall aim of cajoling the reader into accepting the writer's point of view. This is appropriate for some things like essays, humor and journal entries, but woefully inadequate for most forms of writing practiced at the highest level. Personality-driven writing is unacceptable for most projects required by your writing clients, even when they say otherwise. A novelist who forgoes the usual third person singular approach to storytelling in favor of a first person perspective runs the very real risk that the work's audience will soon tire of the inner workings of the writer's personality and lose the connection with the story's main character. Likewise, self-aggrandizing or idiosyncratic writing styles are poorly suited to most other forms of serious writing. 5. Failing to do your homework. Research, research, research. Research your characters and story background if you are writing fiction. Dig into the specifics required for technical writing projects. Put things in proper format for publishers and industry-specific content. In all cases, know your readership thoroughly, perhaps the most important element of overall research you need to master. 6. Picking an improper genre or style. Is your piece a work of fiction? If so, would it be better suited as a screenplay rather than a novella? Are you writing a personal essay, travelogue or How To piece? Is that web content for a sales oriented site or an information site? Writing styles change, not only according to the type of reader, but also to where that writing is ultimately going to end up. Each genre and sometimes even subgenres and categories require different types of writing. You should be intimately familiar with the requirements of each one. 7. Knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes not knowing when to stop is the hardest mistake to correct. Try to avoid being too wordy. Practice the fine art of editing. Remember-they are only words and your reader is only human. Try not to belabor the point or put anyone to sleep. resume writers