What are your Five Writing Strengths?
What are your Five Writing Strengths?
I was asked this a few weeks ago in person and then saw it in writing on a blog so I guess I need to actually answer this one since is has now approached me from different directions.
What are my five writing strengths?!
Hummm... Good, good question. I'm going to have to think about this for a few moments. Please, go listen to music and come back at a later date.
Just kidding- or am I?
So here goes:
1.) Voice (no not like a vocal thing, silly even though I have been told I have a great singing voice. hee hee)
I have been told that I have a unique child-like voice. I am not sure if that is a compliment or not. I think it has to do with all the children/young adult literature I have read over the 35 or so years I have been reading. Possibly it is because my three favorite authors are L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott and J.K. Rowling and I tend to read their books every year without fail or maybe just maybe I am just an old child at heart and I like writing in that point of view. I am not sure. I really think that this can be a strength if I were to write children books.
But, I do want to learn to write better in an adult voice consistantly.
2.) I Love to Read
I am a prolific reader which gives me the vocabulary and imagery to carry this out in my own writing. Now, I know above I said I read alot of YA/Children books; but don't get me wrong, I know how to gobble up a good book by classic authors and obscure writers of all ages and do so atleast 25 times a year. I would love to read more, but who can read more than that while also going to school,studying for classes and caring for a family? If you find someone who can pull this feat off then kudos to that person for their awesomeness (that was my son Devin's vocab tapping into my brain.)
3.) As Bill and Ted would say: I am a most excellent Speller
My pet peeve is misspelling words and so this comes to me naturally while I type to fix errors when they come along. This is helpful in my eyes because then I don't have to go back over my writing to edit spelling so much. Now, don't get me wrong- I am known to stall when asked to speed demand prompt writing because I can't handle not correcting errors as they come along.
What I really need is someone who will be my editor on sentence structure especially comma splices. That is not a good trait as a writer and I unfortunately am a chronic splicer with my own writing.
4.) Magnificent Memory
It has always helped me to draw into experiences that have come from my past, someone else's experiences and then they flow out onto the page to fill out a characters personality.
5.) Creative Tap is Constantly Flowing
I don't know if this is really a strength when the tap turns on at 3 a.m. and I am sleeping without pencil and paper to be found on my night stand, but I really don't know of any writer that doesn't have their creative juices flowing either early dawn breaking or late into the candle burning night.
The writing I have been complimented on by professors are those that happened to just come to me without really trying and when I am not pressured to write like for an assignment.
One time for an American Literature class I had to write a Comparative Essay. I had done all the reading, researching and note taking I needed weeks in advance but because I had over-prepared, the creativity was fractured to say the least and my writing well was bone dry. Not a single word would come out of my finger tips that was good. I had crap for a paper and everyone knew it especially me! I started writing a letter about how like Bartleby I was shutting down on writing the paper and that it was becoming a monomaniacal point in my life. Just writing that letter as part of my intro started the rest of the writing flowing and by the time I got to my comparative and analytical argument I was on fire. But, I didn't take out the personal flowing letter to the Professor so I ended up with a B plus instead of the deserving A as she put it because everything after that intro was superior scholar writing.
I guess I really do need an editor to shut down the stupidity of what I don't know is good to keep in and what is crap to take out.
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